SEOUL, South Korea - President Obama warned North Korea on Sunday not to follow through on a planned long-range missile test next month, accusing the authoritarian regime of leading its people down a "dead end" and vowing to break its pattern of "bad behavior."
Opening a three-day trip in South Korea for a nuclear security summit, Obama spoke in stern terms as he sought to ramp up international pressure on Pyongyang to abandon what U.S. officials have termed a direct violation of the North's pledge to end weapons tests in exchange for food aid.
"North Korea needs to understand that bad behavior will not be rewarded," Obama said during an evening news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak after the two leaders met to discuss security and trade issues at the Blue House.
"It has been a pattern for decades that North Korea thought if it acts provocatively, it would somehow be bribed into ceasing and desisting acting provocatively," Obama added. "President Lee and I decided we are going to break that pattern."
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The North's belligerence has overshadowed the summit's primary agenda, securing loose fissile materials and keeping them out of the hands of terrorists. More than 50 world leaders are gathered for the summit, which begins today. Soon after Obama touched down in Seoul on Sunday morning, he paid his first visit to the demilitarized zone that has divided the Korean peninsula since 1953, thanking U.S. and South Korean troops stationed along the tense border that Obama referred to as "freedom's frontier."
Obama also called on China, the North's main benefactor and ally, to get tougher on the regime because, the president said, Beijing's habit of "turning a blind eye to deliberate provocations ... that's obviously not working."
The frustrating part, Obama said, is that China has undergone the very metamorphosis that the international community is seeking from North Korea: from a closed authoritarian regime to a society more engaged with the world. Obama said he will deliver the message in person in a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao today.
