The U.S. Department of the Treasury designated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, ten other individuals, and five entities, “for their ties to North Korea’s notorious abuses of human rights”.
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The U.S. has never before sanctioned the North for abusing its people, nor directly targeted Kim – although the United Nations General Assembly has supported referring Pyongyang’s leadership to the International Criminal Court, having been presented evidence since 2014 of widespread violations including the brutal treatment of more than 100,000 political prisoners.
“The more we say about bringing Kim to justice, the more efforts North Korean officials and diplomats would make to thin out his responsibilities, scaling down prison camps, feeding people better and so forth”, he said during a recent seminar hosted by the U.N.in Seoul on North Korean human rights.
This came a day after the U.S. imposed unilateral sanctions on North Korean leader for the first time over claims that he is responsible for a long list of rights violations.
Those sanctioned by the US are for the first time being publicly named, which the report says is quite revealing, considering how secretive a society and its leadership are.
United States officials accused North Korea of inflicting “intolerable cruelty and hardship on millions of its own people including extrajudicial killings, forced labour, and torture”.
They also expressed the hope that the State Department report and sanctions will help convince mid- and lower-tier officials to refrain from committing human rights abuses out of fear of being blacklisted.
But US State Department spokesperson John Kirby conceded that the blacklisting may not have much of an effect on the North Korean leader.
China argues that the human rights situation in North Korea is not a threat to worldwide peace and security and has sought to prevent the issue being discussed at the U.N. Security Council.
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”.
The Chinese are concerned the missile defense system could be used against them, and the US sanctions could hit Chinese companies that trade with North Korea.
The blacklist, months if not years in the making, drew on the work of national governments, worldwide organizations, civil society groups and defectors from North Korea.
“These sanctions are independent American measures, but by labeling [specific parties] they have global repercussions because they specify that Kim Jong Un is a human rights violator”.
The North, which tolerates no criticism of its leader, had been expected to respond angrily. North Korea also maintains a system of forced labor and restricts freedom of expression, religion and movement, the State Department said.
An op-ed published by Washington Post refers to a blog which refers to satellite imagery that shows what appears to be a significant reduction of trade over the China-North Korean border, suggesting that they might be cooperating with the strict sanctions.
The rollout of the blacklist, which was accompanied by a damning State Department report on North Korean human rights abuses, was mandated by the North Korea Sanctions Act of 2016, passed by the U.S. Congress earlier this year.
It added that the move demonstrates the US’s “determination” to end human rights abuses. “There will be numerous official and state media denunciations which will target the USA and Seoul and the wording will be vituperative and blistering”, he said.
It’s because Kim Jong-un is a tyrant to his own people.
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Pyongyang’s state-controlled news agency KCNA said Tuesday the United States and Japan launched a “criminal joint nuclear attack training exercise” in May, citing the presence of B-52 Stratofortress bombers near South Korea in June.
