North Korea has continued to dodge sanctions put in place over its past missile launches and underground nuclear tests, a diplomat said after a closed-door meeting on the implementation of the sanctions held Thursday at the U.N. Security Council. "There are some loopholes in the implementation of the sanctions regime that are being exploited by the DPRK," British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said, citing a report by the Panel of Experts, tasked with helping a Security Council committee monitor the implementation and violations of the sanctions.

U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy Glyn Davies said Thursday that despite recent "bellicose threats" and provocations from North Korea, he remains hopeful about pursuing peaceful diplomacy with Pyongyang. "There is always hope for diplomacy and this is a case where we have to keep chipping away at it," Davies said, adding that he is "somewhat optimistic" especially in light of a "growing" international consensus condemning the February nuclear test.

By Heng Xie and Megha Rajagopalan BEIJING (Reuters) - Bank of China Ltd <3988.HK> <601988.SS> has shut the account of North Korea's main foreign exchange bank, which was hit with U.S. sanctions in March after Washington accused it of helping finance Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.

Japan on Wednesday welcomed Chinese moves to put pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile development programs, after China's state-run bank halted transactions with a North Korean lender allegedly linked to these programs. "We hail such a response made by China, which has influence on North Korea," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a news conference. Beijing is a major ally of Pyongyang.