U.S. sanctions N. Korea leader over human rights abuses

It was the first time that Washington has put Kim on the blacklist and marked the first U.S. sanctions on Pyongyang over its human rights violations, according to a Treasury Department official.

Adam Szubin, acting Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, criticized Pyongyang's human rights record, saying, "Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea continues to inflict intolerable cruelty and hardship on millions of its own people, including extrajudicial killings, forced labor, and torture."

"The actions taken today...highlight the U.S. government's condemnation of this regime's abuses and our determination to see them stopped," Szubin said.

The sanctions, which freeze property and other assets within U.S. jurisdiction, extend to 10 other individuals and five entities, the department said in a statement.

The individuals include senior officials of the Ministry of State Security, North Korea's secret police, and the Ministry of People's Security, a police organ.

The sanctions also prohibit Americans from conducting transactions with those on the list, the department said.

Given the improbability that Kim or the others possess any assets in U.S. territory, the action is seen as mainly symbolic, a part of a series of measures the United States has been taking to increase pressure on North Korea.

In June, Washington designated Pyongyang a "primary money laundering concern" in an effort to cut it off from the international financial system and discourage it from pursuing missile and nuclear weapons developments.

Amid speculation that Wednesday's action would anger North Korea and spark a new round of provocations to further raise tensions on the Korean Peninsula, State Department spokesman John Kirby said, "I can't predict what Kim Jong Un is going to do as a result of this or any other actions by our government or governments around the world."

"But this is yet another opportunity for him to try to make the right decisions," Kirby said in a press briefing.

However, he called Kim "a leader who has resisted many international efforts to curb his provocative behavior and to get him to make the kinds of responsible decisions that he should be making on behalf of his people."

The latest sanctions came with the release by the State Department of a report on human rights abuses and censorship in North Korea.

The report said many of the abuses such as extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, forced labor and torture "are committed in the country's political prison camps (kwanliso), which hold an estimated 80,000-120,000 prisoners, including children and family members of the accused."

The North's leadership "also maintains an extensive system of forced labor through its rigid controls over workers, and restricts the exercise of freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, association, religion or belief, and movement," it said.

Speaking in a conference call Wednesday, a State Department official said, "I don't think it will come as a huge surprise to the North Korean regime that we are highlighting human rights abuses and are holding its leaders personally responsible for those abuses."

A Treasury Department official dismissed the view that it was unusual to sanction a head of state, saying the United States has punished Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and others in the past.

Source: Kyodo