The new measures imposed over the North’s recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch also blacklist scores of North Korean individuals and entities and bans vessels previously docked in North Korean ports from South Korean waters.
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The exercises Key Resolve and Foal Eagle are to be held until April, CNN reported, and, according to The Washington Post, are to include rehearsals of surgical strikes on Pyongyang’s weapons facilities.
The move to ban foreign vessels that have previously docked in the North would appear to spell the end of an ambitious trilateral infrastructure project aimed at transporting Russian coal to South Korean ports through the North’s port city of Rajin and Russia’s border town of Khasan.
The Philippines has already seized a North Korean cargo ship which was among 31 listed by the resolution as banned from global ports.
The South Korean government said in a statement that the sanctions target 38 individuals and 24 organizations in North Korea, and two individuals with nationalities of third countries and six organizations in other countries.
South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said North Korea must refrain from a “rash act that brings destruction upon itself”.
Joint military exercises on the Korean Peninsula are prompting chilling new threats from Pyongyang.
There was no immediate reaction from North Korea to the South Korean allegations of cellphone hacking.
The first thing to keep in mind is that Pyongyang’s near-term nuclear warnings are mostly bluff; more of a strong deterrent that Pyongyang can use in its propaganda, rather than an actual sign of imminent war.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves at a parade in Pyongyang, North Korea, Saturday, Oct. 10.
South Korea and the USA militaries began talks on Friday on the deployment of an advanced anti-missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea. It launched short-range projectiles last week, hours after the U.N. Security Council approved new sanctions, and it could fire more missiles or artillery pieces into the sea as a show of force.
Last year, South Korea said North Korea has a 6,000-member cyber army dedicated to disrupting the South’s military and government.
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Similar nuclear threats by the North were made in 2013, around the time of the spring-time military drills, after the United Nations sanctioned the North over a nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.
