The executive order freezes any property belonging to the North Korean government in the US and prohibits the export of goods from the U.S.to North Korea.
Advertisement
As South Korea lauded the fresh US sanctions signed Wednesday against North Korea, the Kim Jong Un regime released a new statement slamming South Korean president Park Geun-hye.
President Obama issued this executive order, according to the White House.
“We will work closely with our global partners to continue in a strong and unambiguous way to pressure North Korea to abandon its illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs”, said Adam Szubin, the Treasury’s top sanctions official.
“What it looks like to me is the North Koreans are sort of methodically going through all the places that we expressed skepticism about, and they are releasing pictures and I suspect that will culminate in this last round of tests”, he said.
China has also drastically stepped up searches of cargo headed to North Korea, a government source here said, bolstering staff at customs checkpoints.
As to (for) the implementation of UN Security Council sanctions, Chinese ambassador to South Korea Qiu Guohong vowed Beijing will (quote) “strictly and seriously implement the new sanctions”.
The U.S. government has held periodic talks and reached agreements with the regime, only to break off contact after North Korea violated the terms of the accords.
The sanctions come on the same day North Korea sentenced an American college student to 15 years in prison with hard labor for stealing a political banner from the hotel he was staying at in Pyongyang.
“North Korean sanctions are finally getting serious”, said Peter Harrell, a former senior State Department official who worked on sanctions.
Military tensions have been soaring on the divided Korean peninsula ever since the North carried out its fourth nuclear test on January 6, followed a month later by a long-range rocket launch that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.
Is North Korea a real threat? .
The sanctions were passed at the United Nations in response to a nuclear test in January and ballistic missile launch in February.
The White House complained at the time that even by North Korea’s standard for belligerent bombast, the comments about Obama were “particularly ugly and disrespectful”.
North Korean nuclear scientist, Cho Hyong-II, said, if the hydrogen bomb was placed on an intercontinental ballistic missile and hit Manhattan, New York, it could level the entire borough, leaving all the people dead and the city in ashes.
In announcing the sentence, state news outlet KCNA said Warmbier had committed his offense “pursuant to the U.S. government’s hostile policy” toward North Korea.
Advertisement
South Korea and the United States kicked off the annual Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises for a weeks-long run on March 7 in South Korea, mobilizing some 300,000 local troops along with 17,000 USA forces.
