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US President Donald Trump speaks with Marillyn Hewson

Given the paltry progress in negotiations aimed at implementing the agreement reached during the North Korea-US summit in Singapore on June 12, a number of departments in the US administration, under US President Donald Trump, have issued a joint advisory cautioning businesses not to violate US and UN sanctions on North Korea through careless deals. This advisory is thought to put “low-intensity pressure” on North Korea to take concrete measures toward denuclearization.

On July 23, the US State Department joined the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Homeland Security in publishing a 17-page document called the “North Korea Sanctions and Enforcement Actions Advisory.” This is the second advisory this year, following one in February about transshipments and other maritime transactions with the North.

The advisory warned that companies that purchase or order products that have been produced by North Korea as a subcontractor for companies in other countries can be placed under sanctions despite not being told of North Korea’s involvement. The advisory included a list of 239 North Korean joint ventures in 37 industries (including agriculture, animation, paper manufacture, information technology and land development) while basically advising companies not to do business with these joint ventures. The advisory also mentioned cases in which the origin of North Korean marine products and textiles had been disguised.

In regard to North Korean guest workers in other countries, the advisory stated that such workers had been sent to 42 countries in 2017 and 2018 and that China and Russia continued to employ the greatest number of such guest workers.

In a press release, the US State Department stated that the advisory did not represent the imposition of new sanctions while urging the international community not to let up its pressure until North Korea denuclearizes. The apparent goal is to place psychological pressure on North Korea by strengthening the implementation of the existing sanctions in order to bring it to the table for practical negotiations and induce it to take steps toward denuclearization.

Apparently linked to this was the announcement that Mark Lambert, the US State Department’s Acting Deputy Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, would visit South Korea on July 25 to meet with the representatives of South Korean companies involved with economic cooperation with North Korea and explain the US’s position on the sanctions.

In related news, the US House and Senate Armed Services Committees agreed on a final version of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act that prevents the US troop presence in South Korea from being reduced below 22,000, CNN reported. The bill does allow an exception in the event that the US Secretary of Defense certifies that the drawdown would “not significantly undermine the security of US allies” and that South Korea and Japan had been consulted.

The bill that the House Armed Services Committee had passed in order to check the “unpredictability” of Trump prior to his summit with North Korea was adopted without revision by the Senate Armed Services Committee. The official size of USFK is 28,500. The National Defense Authorization Act details Congress’s policy guidelines in the area of national defense.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

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