US slaps fresh sanctions against North Korea

The sanctions are specifically targeted against Office 39 - a secretive branch of the North Korean government that manages slush funds and raises money for the leadership, including by trafficking drugs.

The sanctions also targets North Korea's infrastructure for importing and exporting conventional arms - Green Pine Associated Corporation and its parent, the Reconnaissance General Bureau and bureau's commander Lt Gen Kim Yong Chol. Other entities include two trading firms -- Korea Taesong Trading Company and Korea Heungjin Trading Company -- that allegedly act on behalf of North Korean arms dealer KOMID in deals involving Iran and Syria.

"The order gives the US government new authority to go after the arms sales and goods procurement, money laundering, counterfeiting of currency and other illicit financial activities that enrich the highest echelons of the North Korean government while the North Korean people suffer," Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey said after President Barack Obama issued an order.

Noting that the world is well aware of North Korean government's record of illicit activity and its belligerent behaviour, Levey said, the President decided that North Korea's continued provocative actions such as its test of a nuclear device and missile launches in 2009, its violations of UN Security Council Resolutions and its illicit and deceptive practises in international markets - justify fresh sanctions.

"The destructive course that North Korean government is charting is facilitated by a lifeline of cash generated through a range of illicit activities. North Korea's government helps maintain its authority by placating privileged elites with money and perks, such as luxury goods like jewelry, luxury cars and yachts," he said. "Not only do these transactions contravene UN Security Council Resolution 1718, they are unconscionable in light of the fact that many of North Korea's people live in dire poverty," Levey said, adding the North Korean government receives millions of dollars every year from arms sales that are also outlawed by UN Security Council resolutions.

The North Korean government, he alleged, also benefits from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, counterfeiting of US currency and selling counterfeit cigarettes.
Asserting that these measures are not directed at the people of North Korea, he said the financial measures are aimed at disrupting its efforts to engage in illicit activities and its ability to surreptitiously move its money by deceiving banks and smuggling cash worldwide.

"By naming the individuals and entities involved in these activities, we will be excluding them from any access to the US financial system, and at the same time we will be assisting responsible businesses and financial institutions around the world that are trying to protect themselves from illicit North Korean activities," Levey said.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has said that it is ready to engage with Pyongyang, but the onus for this lies on the communist regime, which has to show that the talks would be constructive. "We remain prepared to engage North Korea, but North Korea has to demonstrate to us that such engagement would be fruitful," State Department spokesman P J Crowley said.

Noting that engagement is a means to an end, Crowley said the US is certainly ready to engage North Korea when it think that it can be constructive. "Steve Bosworth was in Pyongyang with Sung Kim in December. We have been prepared for other meetings with North Korean officials," he said.

"This is where North Korea's actions and behaviour has a very significant role in the process. If North Korea is seeking to work constructively with the international community, including the US, then there are definitely things that North Korea can do or things that it should avoid doing. It should avoid provocative actions as one example," he said.

Crowley said there are agreements that North Korea has previously signed that outline precisely what it is expected to do in terms of beginning the process of denuclearization. "We want to see North Korea avoid provocative actions that increase tension and, in fact, impede progress in this area," Crowley said, adding "we are willing to engage North Korea, but North Korea is an actor in this process and the things that it does can impact this process."

Robert Einhorn, Special Advisor for Non Proliferation and Arms Control, said the US continue to support negotiations as the best way of achieving a denuclearised Korean Peninsula. "North Korea abandoned negotiations nearly two years ago, and repeatedly violated its own commitments under the six-party talks. We're not prepared to reward North Korea simply for returning to the negotiating table, including by removing or reducing sanctions," Einhorn said.

"North Korea needs to demonstrate convincingly through concrete actions that it's ready to take irreversible steps to live up to its September 2005 commitments, especially its commitment to denuclearise," he said.

"If North Korea chooses that path, sanctions will be lifted, energy and other economic assistance will be provided, its relations with the United States will be normalized and the current armistice on the peninsula will be replaced by a permanent peace agreement," he said. "But if it continues its defiance and provocation, it will continue to suffer the consequences, and actions like today's to strengthen sanctions will only continue and intensify," Einhorn warned.