South Korea announces symbolic, new sanctions on N. Korea

Fox News has said that South Korea is also planning to forbid those technical experts reentry to the country in the event they visit North Korea.

It calls on United Nations states to reduce the number of staff at North Korea’s foreign missions and requires countries to limit the number of bank accounts to one per North Korean diplomatic mission amid concerns that Pyongyang had used its diplomats and foreign missions to engage in illicit activities.

Two days prior, the Security Council voted unanimously to impose their “toughest” sanctions yet on North Korea, stopping about $800 million in exports including coal and copper. That effort resulted in “a long history in South Korea of animosity toward Japan”. China controls the lifelines of North Korea’s economy, and Beijing’s basic plan to block powerful sanctions that could lead to the collapse of the Kim regime seems unlikely to change.

The tougher United States approach reflects growing impatience with China and a view that it has not strictly enforced existing sanctions to help curb Pyongyang’s nuclear programme, which a USA policy of both sanctions and diplomacy has failed to dent.

The US sanctions announcement had accused Dandong Hongxiang of making up a “key illicit network supporting North Korea’s weapons proliferation”.

“China always firmly opposes unilateral sanctions on a country outside the framework of UN Security Council sanctions, and is even more opposed to any party harming China’s reasonable and lawful interests through unilateral sanctions”, he told a regular news briefing. On Friday, it expanded its ban to include Japanese-registered ships as well, essentially covering all ships worldwide.

Meanwhile, preparations to deploy THAAD to South Korea continue.

Last Wednesday, the UN Security Council adopted a new set of tough sanctions on Pyongyang in response to the communist nation’s nuclear test two months earlier. “China will play the North Korea card”. America aimed to press China into joining in sanctions against its neighbor. He also repeated Beijing’s opposition to U.S. plans to place a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) installation in South Korea-a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system.

The new sanctions target North Korea’s hard currency revenues by placing a cap on coal exports, cutting them by at least 62 per cent. Japan intends to work closely with these specialists and push for all countries involved, including China, to follow the measures strictly.

“Through sharply expanding the scope and quality of our unilateral sanctions against the North, our government hopes to supplement the UNSC Resolution 2321”.

As South Korea rumbles toward the dismissal of scandal-plagued President Park Geun-hye, and Donald Trump ascends to the US presidency, a pall of uncertainty is spreading over East Asia.

“What the Obama administration has been doing isn’t working, and our enemies are getting stronger and more belligerent, and with the growing unrest in South Korea, the Korean peninsula is all the more perilous”, Cruz said.

In Seoul, Yonsei University’s Choi Jong-kyun questioned the need for such an agreement, telling VOA, “Do we have not enough deterrence and information sharing with the USA vis-à-vis North Korea?”.

For the sake of argument, let’s accept the best-case premise that North Korea makes $700 million less on coal exports next year, and is unable to make it up in other economic activity (another hidden assumption!).