Szubin, acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence indicated the sanctions were imposed since, “Under Kim Jong-un, North Korea continues to inflict intolerable cruelty and hardship on millions of its own people, including extrajudicial killings, forced labor, and torture”.
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The sanctions targeted the supreme leader and 10 other individuals, as well as five government ministries and departments, including two ministries that run North Korea’s secret police and operate prison camps.
“The government highly praises and welcomes the step that the US has taken in imposing sanctions on human rights violators in the North”, Seoul’s foreign ministry stated.
North Korea has also been mentioned by the presumptive presidential nominee for the Republican Party, Donald Trump, who likely as a reaction to the country being sanctioned by the US over the years has offered to negotiate with leader Kim Jong Un rather than impose more sanctions.
The State Department said human rights abuses in North Korea are among the worst in the world.
The move came on Wednesday for their alleged complicity in human rights abuses against the North Korean people.
The U.S. has filed similar sanctions against other world leaders: Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The “Marshall” as he is called in North Korea, is among 23 individuals and entities cited for their role in serious human rights violations, hunting down defectors or censorship in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“Our hope is that we continue to cooperate as we have been in the last months, particularly with the U.N. Security Council resolution that we passed in which China stepped up and significantly increased its own actions with respect to (North Korea)”, he said.
OFAC has previously designated four individuals and three entities also highlighted in the State Department report. The government’s position, expressed through the Korean Central News Agency, is that worldwide criticism of its human rights record is a pretext for overthrowing its Juche-based socialist system, while the abuses of its critics go unpunished.
Numerous crimes are said to have been committed in the country’s political prison camps – known as kwanliso – which holds 80,000 to 120,000 prisoners where torture, execution, sexual assault, starvation and slave labour are common.
“There will be a bombardment of diatribes from North Korea against the United States as the military, government agencies and various social groups are likely to fall over themselves to prove their loyalty to Kim”, Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies told AFP.
North Korean officials have repeatedly denied running labor camps or political prisons. “There will be numerous official and state media denunciations, which will target the US and Seoul, and the wording will be vituperative and blistering”.
But critics say the sanctions are more likely to infuriate North Korea than induce change.
For the first time ever, Kim Jong-un just got sanction-slapped by the U.S.
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“If America had the will to re-enter negotiations with Kim Jong Un, it would not have included Kim Jong Un as a sanctions target”. [Image by Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo] China and Russian Federation are two countries who have long had trade and finance relations with North Korea, but after being sanctioned by the USA, they appear to have changed their habits and been somewhat cooperative, which is detailed in a report filed by The Inquisitr earlier this year. “There may be the wish to prove the policy of “strategic patience” against the North has not failed, but when it comes to practical results, there won’t be much to show”, Yang said.
