The Wall Street Journal says the U.S.’ pressure on North Korea's global ties has yielded results.
 
The U.S. daily reports “U.S. diplomats, pursuing a quieter campaign alongside U.N. sanctions and talks with China, have been approaching nations as big as Germany and as small as Fiji with highly specific requests to shut down North Korea’s foreign links.”
 
The paper said such pressure campaign has become a cornerstone of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s policy on North Korea. The report said that Tillerson had elevated the campaign which was initially launched in early 2016 after the Obama administration saw the North make a significant advance in its development of an intercontinental nuclear weapon.
 
The daily quoted a former U.S. official as saying that under the strengthened campaign, State Department officials drew up a spreadsheet that listed all of the North’s known political, economic and military interests around the world and used it as a "to do list" of entities to target for closure.
 
The official went on to say that U.S. diplomats began coordinating on a weekly basis with South Korea and on a monthly basis with Japan, “mapping out a strategy and comparing notes.”
 
More than 20 nations have curbed diplomatic or business operations of the North Korean government with the State Department's pressure campaign.

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