The Trump administration on Friday unveiled its toughest package yet of sanctions against North Korea, targeting 56 trade companies, merchants, and vessels that have continued to prop up the Kim Jong Un regime and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Senior administration officials said the sanctions will target 27 shipping and trade companies, 28 vessels and at least one individual, from countries including China, Panama, Taiwan, Singapore, North Korea, and Tanzania. Among those targeted are companies that “have been used to engage in U.N.-prohibited ship-to-ship transfers,” one official said.
“These designations are a critical part of our maximum pressure campaign to diplomatically and economically isolate North Korea,” a second senior administration official told reporters during a call Friday morning.
The purpose of the latest sanctions is to “show Kim Jong Un there is no other path for him to take except denuclearization” in the Korean Peninsula, the official said.
U.S. Coast Guard officials are also expected to issue a global shipping advisory to accompany the newest sanctions to ensure countries are aware that they will face “very significant consequences for evading our sanctions,” the official continued.
In the months since the Trump administration last imposed sanctions against Pyongyang, North Korea has sought to disguise its vessels by painting over their names and intentionally disabling their collision avoidance systems in order to prevent others from seeing their movements. Last week, Japanese military officials reported witnessing a ship-to-ship transfer in the East China Sea that likely violated previous sanctions, according to local media reports.
The administration’s latest attempt to pressure North Korea into abandoning its nuclear weapons program comes as Trump’s daughter Ivanka and several senior administration officials attend the closing days of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Ahead of a dinner with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday, Ivanka said the purpose of her visit was to “reaffirm our commitment to our maximum pressure campaign to ensure that the Korean Peninsula is denuclearized.”
Meanwhile, Moon said North Korea’s attendance at the Olympics this month provided an important opportunity for dialogue between the North and South and “led to lowering of tensions on the peninsula and an improvement in inter-Korean relations.”
