thank you for your service to the country and your willingness to continue to serve this Nation.

This is not a time for the U.S. to shrink from the world or to shrink from that engagement.

The alliance that we have with South Korea will be strengthened under President-elect Trump's administration.

The legislation is the first standalone sanction legislation on North Korea, mandated sanctions on those who assist Pyongyang's proliferation activities, human rights violations, and its malicious cyber efforts.

We must leave no doubt in the minds of our alliances the willingness and the commitment of the United States to both use the diplomacy and force where necessary to achieve the goals of that alliance.

Are you willing to exert additional pressure on North Korea through China, including additional U.N. Security Council resolutions?

I certainly support the President's view that we need to reinstitute leverage on Iran to hold them to the very first page of the JCPOA.

I think it is important that we look at the North Korea Sanctions Act that this Congress passed unanimously.

We are deterring aggression and, indeed, inducing behavior with North Korea and others around the region.

the United States and international community has to do more to help support this democratic effort

I would hope that the State Department, Secretary Tillerson and yourself, would continue our pressure, abandonment of the failed strategic patience doctrine.

Do I have your commitment that you will work with us to make sure that those laws are fully executed?

I hope that this position, upon your confirmation--you will use it to really work with Congress in a way that I think has been neglected over the past several years.

This Congress worked to change the doctrine of strategic patience which had allowed the North Korean regime to proliferate.

One thing that we have to consider is whether or not China is going to, in full faith, carry out its commitment under United Nations resolutions.

I was pleased, one of the reasons I was pleased, that we moved away from the failed doctrine of strategic patience to a new doctrine of maximum pressure.

I have been developing legislation known as the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act, which would focus on three areas...

I hope that we will increase our priorities on Asia and the regions represented.

Now, will you enter into negotiations with North Korea outside of the CVID, the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization parameters?

Will you negotiate with North Korea outside of those parameters, the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization?

If China is serious about holding bad actors responsible for those bad actions, we cannot, as the United States, allow China to backslide into a posture that does not hold Kim Jong Un responsible for his bad actions.

There is no daylight between our two nations.

I hope that in your interactions with Chinese officials, that you will make North Korea the highest priority possible.

I do not think that we should be forgoing that kind of a sale of defense equipment to Taiwan because we think China is going to suddenly change their behavior on North Korea.

if we are not present within the region either economically or from a security standpoint, that creates a challenge for U.S. leadership.