North Korea

North Korea Policy

Obama (D-IL) advocates for developing an “international coalition” to handle nuclear North Korea, calls the Six-Party Talks “ad hoc,” and says he supports “sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy.”
Within weeks of Pyongyang’s nuclear test, Obama appeared on Meet the Press and said the United States had no leverage over North Korea because of Washington’s refusal to hold bilateral negotiations. He also clarified a passage from his book Audacity of Hope (in which he posed the question “Why invade Iraq and not North Korea or Burma?”) and said he did not consider invading the communist country an option to resolving the nuclear issue.
In May 2005, Obama named North Korea as one of the "biggest proliferation challenges we currently face." Obama has called for the strengthening of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that countries like North Korea "that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions."