The U.S. imposed sanctions Wednesday on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and 10 other top officials for human rights abuses in an escalation of Washington’s effort to isolate the authoritarian government.
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Although North Korea is already sanctioned to the hilt because of its nuclear weapons program, it is the first time that Kim and other top officials implicated in abuses, such as running the nation’s notorious gulag, have been personally blacklisted.
The sanctions officially freeze “any property or interest in property of those designated by OFAC within US jurisdiction” and prohibit “transactions by USA persons involving the designated persons”.
The report also claimed that roughly 80,000 to 120,000 North Koreans languish in prison camps run by the government, where they face “torture, execution, rape, starvation, forced labor, and lack of medical care”.
There are 23 people on the blacklist, the US officials clarified. “If the intention of the sanctions is to get North Korea to stop abusing its citizens, the United States and South Korea need to fundamentally rethink their policies toward Pyongyang”, Gause said.
Romberg said that what’s important is whether the new U.N. Security Council sanctions or unilateral USA financial sanctions will be implemented “in a way that will change North Korea’s calculus about the costs and benefits of its nuclear program”.
North Korea is well known to be an unpredictable nation, and with tales of their leaders being able to control elements of nature, this might prove to be a unsafe thing.
“We aim to send a signal to all government officials who might be responsible for human rights abuses, including prison camp managers and guards, interrogators, and defector chasers, with the goal of changing their behaviour”, he said.
The sanctions were announced in parallel with the State Department’s release of a new report that documents the abuses throughout the North Korean security apparatus and political prison camp system.
“Lifting the anonymity of these functionaries may make them think twice from time to time when considering a particular act of cruelty”, one senior administration official said. Commission of Inquiry report which concluded that North Korea’s human rights violations were so widespread and systemic as to constitute “crimes against humanity”.
The Obama administration’s designation last month of North Korea as a primary money-laundering concern was likely brought on by Section 201 of the law which “urge [d] the President, in the strongest terms-to immediately designate North Korea as a jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern” and imposed a requirement on the Secretary of Treasury to determine within 180 days whether “reasonable grounds exist for concluding that North Korea is a jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern”. The government continues to commit extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and detention, forced labor and torture.
The US official said that Kim was responsible for abuses in his role as head of the communist country’s Ministry of State Security and Ministry of People’s Security.
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North Korea has repeatedly defied the U.N. Security Council with its nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches.
