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North Korean workers wait to depart for Pyongyang at Vladivostok International Airport on Dec. 20, 2019. (Yonhap News)

On Jan. 14, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a North Korean company and a China-based lodging facility because of its connection to North Koreans working overseas.

The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced on Wednesday that it was sanctioning Namgang Trading Corporation (NTC), in Pyongyang, and Beijing Sukbakso, in China, for violating UN Security Council Resolutions 2375 and 2397.

“The exportation of North Korean workers raises illicit revenue for the government of North Korea in violation of UN sanctions,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.

“The NTC is involved in the logistics cycle of exporting workers and handles North Korean personnel’s visas, passports, departures, and overseas employment. NTC personnel then repatriate funds back to North Korea, some of which are routed directly back to the Government of North Korea,” OFAC said in a statement.

OFAC added that Beijing Sukbakso “facilitates the NTC’s exportation and repatriation of North Korean workers and likely facilitates the workers’ remittance payments back to North Korea.”

Sanctions a warning message to countries like China and Russia

The sanctions were imposed three weeks after Dec. 22, 2019, which was the deadline, under Security Council resolutions, for the repatriation of North Koreans working overseas. When an entity is sanctioned by the Treasury, its assets in the US are frozen and the company is banned from conducting transactions with US citizens. But such rules are unlikely to affect the NTC and Beijing Sukbakso, which are too small for the sanctions to have much of a bite.

“These sanctions themselves aren’t intended to have a major economic effect on North Korea. Rather, they represent a warning message that the Trump administration will prioritize the enforcement of the ban on exporting North Korean workers to countries such as China and Russia,” said Neil Bhatiya, a sanctions export and an associate fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

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