UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. imposed new sanctions Thursday against five North Korean officials, four companies and a state agency, and banned imports of two weapons-making materials, in a rare unified push by the world’s powers to thwart Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.
The sanctions, which take immediate effect and are to be carried out by all of the U.N.’s 192 member nations, include travel bans and a freeze on the financial assets against the officials, companies and state agency. Nations also were instructed to refrain from supplying North Korea with certain types of graphite and para-aramid fiber — two of the materials used in ballistic missile parts.
“It is of course significant that we have also put individuals on the list, as this is the first time. This shows that the sanctions are going on a higher level at this moment,” said Fazli Corman, Turkey’s deputy U.N. ambassador, who chairs the panel.
U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said the United States was pleased with the list, which required unanimous approval among the 15 nations that make up a sanctions panel of the U.N.’s powerhouse Security Council. China, North Korea’s biggest ally and trading partner, went along with most of the U.S. recommendations.
The sanctions panel has been focused on three areas: sensitive dual-use goods, ballistic missile-related items and nuclear-related items.
A U.S. expert on North Korean sanctions said the latest measures — putting the U.N. seal of approval on measures the U.S. already has prepared to undertake — are “a modest first step” that might scare off some of North Korea’s weapons-buying customers.
“We’re now into a game of Whack-A-Mole,” said Marcus Noland, an economist at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“What’s going to happen is that the North Koreans are going to try to reconstitute their entities and form new shell companies, new front companies, to continue these activities,” Noland said.
“If there’s really going to be comprehensive efforts on this, they’re going to have to go after the financial intermediaries, some of which are in China, and after the customers,” he said.
North Korea has not indicated how it might react to the sanctions panel’s latest decisions.
But on June 13, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry threatened to take “countermeasures,” including accelerating plutonium reprocessing and starting up uranium enrichment, which would give the regime a second way to make atomic bombs.
North Korea warned that any attempted blockade of its ships would be considered “an act of war” that would draw “a decisive military response.” It also has threatened a “thousand fold” military retaliation against the U.S. and its allies if provoked.
