Abiding by the Security Council’s latest sanctions against Pyongyang, China on Tuesday said that it is banning import of gold and rare earthen material from North Korea.
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The North Korean coal industry is also vital, having delivered some 20 million tons of coal to China a year ago, a 27 percent increase for 2015 that made North Korea the third-largest supplier of coal to China.
Last month’s missile launch came during annual South Korean-U.S. military drills which North Korea has criticized as a rehearsal for an invasion.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un meets scientists and technicians involved in the North’s nuclear program during a field guidance tour, in this photo from the March 9 edition of the Rodong Sinmun newspaper.
The BBC’s Robin Brant in Shanghai says this is a step closer to completely executing the United Nations sanctions which China backed.
Under the new measures, any North Korean ships arriving in China must be inspected for contraband and imports halted if there is proof profits from those exchanges go towards the North’s nuclear programme.
The US and its allies have long complained about rampant smuggling across the Chinese border and North Korea had exported coal in violation of previous sanctions.
The Inquisitr recently reported on North Korea’s threat against the US, where they mocked the fact that the USA had fallen to an attack by just a couple of airplanes.
Although the government official echoed that assessment Tuesday, he added that South Korea had no evidence that the North had deployed such nuclear-tipped Rodong missiles.
Pyongyang claims to have already tested a hydrogen bomb as well as developing the ability to miniaturize nuclear warheads in order to pose a threat to far-flung enemies such as the U.S. “Although both states have been more restrained in this past year in terms of cyber activity directed against us, they remain quite active and are steadily improving their capabilities”, Adm. Michael S. Rogers said, according to Yonhap.
Although Japan is not directly involved with the South China Sea, where Beijing is engaged in land-reclamation projects, China has been alarmed by the actions of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces, which have been loaning defense equipment and providing capacity-building to Southeast Asian countries.
In another sign of rising tensions on the peninsula, South Korea complains that North Korea began disrupting Global Positioning System navigation signals near the city of Incheon and its surrounding provinces last Thursday.
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Export bans on jet and rocket fuel included exemptions for “basic humanitarian needs” in conjunction with inspections, and for civilian passenger jets flying outside of North Korea.
