The US on Friday escalated pressure on North Korea by slapping sanctions on scores of companies and ships accused of illicit trading with the pariah nation, with US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin saying the US has now blacklisted virtually all ships being used by the North.
The administration of US President Donald Trump billed it as the largest installment of North Korean economic restrictions to date as it intensifies its campaign of “maximum pressure” to get the North to give up its nuclear weapons.
Trump went further, declaring in a speech on Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference that it was “the heaviest sanctions ever imposed on a country before.”
While that claim was questionable — previous US measures have targeted bigger players in the North Korean economy, including Chinese and Russian business networks — it significantly tightens the noose on North Korean trading.
Mnuchin told reporters that the US has imposed more than 450 sanctions against the North, about half of them in the past year — including “virtually all their ships that they’re using at this moment in time.”
Trump said that if sanctions do not work, the US would move to “phase two” in its pressure campaign against Pyongyang. He told a White House news conference that could be “very rough” and “very unfortunate for the world,” but did not elaborate.
“[North Korea] really is a rogue nation,” Trump said. “If we can make a deal it will be a great thing. If we can’t, something will have to happen.”
The UN Security Council has in the past year imposed three sets of sanctions on North Korea. Washington is particularly concerned about exports of North Korean coal that are prohibited by the UN sanctions and ship-to-ship transfers of imported oil and petroleum products.
The US Department of the Treasury said it was barring US business transactions with nine international shipping companies from China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Panama, and nine of their vessels. It also blacklisted 16 North Korean shipping companies and 19 of their North Korean-flagged vessels.
Mnuchin said the actions would significantly hinder North Korea’s ability to conduct evasive maritime activities that facilitate illicit coal and fuel transports, and “erode its abilities to ship goods through international waters.”
“We are putting companies and countries across the world on notice that this administration views compliance with US and UN sanctions as a national security imperative. Those who trade with North Korea do so at their own peril,” Mnuchin said.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and adviser, on Friday arrived in South Korea to attend the Winter Olympics closing ceremony today.
At a dinner with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, she reaffirmed “our commitment to our maximum pressure campaign to ensure that the Korean Peninsula is denuclearized.”
The US government on Friday also issued a shipping advisory highlighting the sanctions risk to those who enable shipments of goods to and from North Korea.
It alerted industries to North Korea’s “deceptive shipping practices,” which include falsifying the identity of vessels and disabling transponders that track movements.
The US treasury department published photographs of a US-designated North Korean vessel, Kum Un San 3, which it said used false identifying information and conducted an illicit ship-to-ship transfer with a Panama-flagged vessel that was sanctioned.
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