United States imposes new North Korea sanctions
The United States issued new North Korea-related sanctions on Wednesday, targeting 10 individuals and one entity, reports BritPanorama.
The Treasury Department indicated that the sanctions are a response to schemes involving North Korean IT workers securing fraudulent employment with companies in the United States and elsewhere, with most of their wages diverted to fund Pyongyang’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.
“These networks permeate through the global financial system, necessitating a unified response to match the threat,” the department stated. It also noted that Australia and the European Union imposed North Korea-related sanctions this month.
North Korea’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The sanctions come as President Donald Trump has been keen to resume talks with North Korea, but Pyongyang has shown little interest in diplomacy aimed at containing its nuclear program. Earlier this month, Trump downplayed the prospect of a major meeting with Kim in China next month.
Trump remains the only U.S. president to have met a North Korean leader, conducting an unprecedented series of summits with Kim in 2018 and 2019, though those diplomatic efforts collapsed over demands for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.
Despite this, Trump has repeatedly referred to North Korea as a “nuclear power,” while his administration continues to call for the denuclearization of North Korea and has not formally recognized it as a nuclear-weapons state.
Wednesday’s sanctions specifically target facilitators and North Korean IT workers based in North Korea and Russia. The named entity is the First Financial and Technical Development Center, with six sanctioned individuals connected to that firm.
The Treasury Department had previously imposed sanctions on a separate network of North Korean IT workers in March.
