Biden imposes first new sanctions on N. Korea over human rights

Posted on : 2021-12-13 17:27 KST Modified on : 2021-12-13 17:27 KST
On the same day, experts convened at a seminar spoke on the need to break the vicious cycle of sanctions against North Korea
US President Joe Biden delivers closing remarks at the Summit for Democracy on Saturday in Washington. (AP/Yonhap News)
US President Joe Biden delivers closing remarks at the Summit for Democracy on Saturday in Washington. (AP/Yonhap News)

The US President Joe Biden’s administration marked Human Rights Day on Saturday by including 10 entities and 15 individuals in North Korea, China, Myanmar and Bangladesh as targets for sanctions, citing human rights abuses.

These are the first new sanctions the US has imposed against North Korea since Biden took office.

The targets listed for North Korea included Defense Minister Ri Yong-gil and the Central Public Prosecutors Office. Ri is a former minister of social security, the North Korean equivalent to the South’s National Police Agency commissioner.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which is affiliated with the US Treasury Department, explained that individuals in North Korea are “often subjected to forced labor, constant surveillance, and severe restrictions on their exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

“The DPRK Central Public Prosecutors Office and court system reportedly are used to prosecute and punish persons for political wrongdoing in a legal process involving fundamentally unfair trials. These trials sometimes end in sentencing to the DPRK’s notorious prison camps,” it noted.

Ri, a former minister of social security, was included on the list for the same reasons, the OFAC said. The Central Public Prosecutors Office and Ri were previously designated by the European Union in March as targets of sanctions for human rights violations.

As an example of the unfairness of North Korea’s judicial system, the Treasury Department cited the case of Otto Warmbier, an American university student who was arrested during a 2016 visit to North Korea on suspicion of “regime subversion.” In 2017, Warmbier was returned to the US in a comatose condition and subsequently died.

The Treasury Department’s sanctions list also included the SEK Studio — also known as the Korean April 26 Animation Studio — which was accused of illegally employing North Korean animation creators in China to earn foreign currency.

When an individual or group is subjected to sanctions, its assets in the US are frozen and all transactions with the US are prohibited.

While the Biden administration had extended existing North Korea sanctions, it had not imposed any new ones since taking office. But on Saturday, which marked both Human Rights Day and the opening day of the Summit for Democracy, it extended its first new sanctions against the North based on human rights issues.

Washington has made dialogue overtures to Pyongyang, but it has also insisted that it has no intention of taking the first step by relaxing sanctions.

Further included on the Treasury Department’s list were groups and individuals associated with human rights infringements in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region, as well as Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion, an organization made up of the military and police.

Meanwhile, participants in an international seminar stressed the need to break the vicious cycle of long-term intensive sanctions against North Korea by the US and UN and the worsening humanitarian crisis in the North.

On Saturday, Kevin Gray, a professor at the University of Sussex in the UK and expert on sanctions, took part in the International Seminar on Sanctions against North Korea, which was broadcast in a live feed on YouTube.

Noting that the “primary goals” of the sanctions on North Korea were a “change in target state behavior,” he said that they had “failed” and were only inhibiting humanitarian assistance.

He also observed that the scope of sanctions was limited by the lack of internal division within the North Korean regime.

“Sanctions can also actually be counterproductive. They can reinforce [. . .] what’s known as a ‘rally around the flag’ effect,” he explained.

Ewha Womans University law professor Kim Jung-yeun, a former diplomat and current attorney specializing in international economy, said the US was “realistically the only country capable of spearheading a decision on whether to relax sanctions or to intensify them to achieve their denuclearization target.”

She went on to say, “The only solution available to the South Korean government would be to suggest arguments and create a space to provide the US with a justification and means for adjusting some of its approach to increase the effectiveness of sanctions in achieving denuclearization.”

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent; Lee Jae-hoon, senior staff writer

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

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