President Obama praised Wednesday’s passage of U.N. Security Council sanctions against North Korea, penalties that reflect the international community’s anger against Pyongyang for its nuclear test and rocket launch earlier this year, both of which violated a ban on all nuclear-related activity.
The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution leveling the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades, according to the State Department. The action came only after the United States and North Korea’s traditional ally China spent more than two months haggling over how to respond.
“Today, the international community, speaking with one voice, has sent Pyongyang a simple message: North Korea must abandon these dangerous programs and choose a better path for its people,” Obama said in a statement.
Obama, who faced criticism for his slow response to the nuclear test and missile launch, called the new U.N. sanctions “strong” and a “firm, united, and appropriate response by the international community” to North Korea’s “provocations that flagrantly violated multiple Security Council resolutions.”
The new sanctions have a broader scope, including mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by sea or air and a tightening of the arms embargo to prohibit the transfer or small arms and light weapons to Pyongyang.
The new penalties close a loophole that would have allowed the temporary transfer of arms for “repair” and creates a new conventional arms “catch-all” provision banning the transfer or any item, even if not covered by the arms embargo, except food or medicine that would contribute to the operational capabilities of North Korea’s armed forces.
In addition, the new rules require states to expel North Korea diplomats and foreign nationals found to have engaged in activities prohibited by U.N. Security Council resolutions and to ban any chartering of North Korean vessels or aircraft with an exemption for “livelihood purposes that will not generate revenue” for the government.
“Today’s action, and the international consensus it represents, will hold the regime to account for its increasingly provocative behavior and the threat it poses to not only security on the peninsula, but also to the world,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement.
