The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved tough new sanctions against North Korea on Friday in response to its latest launch of a ballistic missile that Pyongyang says can reach anywhere on the U.S. mainland. The resolution was drafted by the United States and negotiated with the North’s closest ally, China.

“We define this ‘sanctions resolution’ rigged up by the U.S. and its followers as a grave infringement upon the sovereignty of our Republic, as an act of war violating peace and stability in the Korean peninsula and the region and categorically reject the ‘resolution,'” North Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

The ministry said the sanctions are tantamount to a “complete economic blockade” of North Korea.

“If the U.S. wishes to live safely, it must abandon its hostile policy towards the DPRK and learn to co-exist with the country that has nuclear weapons and should wake up from its pipe dream of our country giving up nuclear weapons which we have developed and completed through all kinds of hardships,” said the statement, carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

DPRK is short for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The resolution adopted by the Security Council includes sharply lower limits on North Korea’s refined oil imports, the return home of all North Koreans working overseas within 24 months, and a crackdown on ships smuggling banned items including coal and oil to and from the country.

The Trump administration’s success in achieving the resolution won praise from the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin of Maryland. “That was a good move, a major accomplishment,” he said.

Cardin, who spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” said the stepped-up sanctions should be followed by diplomacy aimed at bringing the U.S. and China together on a sustained effort to ease tensions in that region.

But the resolution doesn’t include even harsher measures sought by the Trump administration that would ban all oil imports and freeze international assets of the government and its leader, Kim Jong Un.

The resolution drew criticism from Russia for the short time the Security Council nations had to consider the draft, and last-minute changes to the text. Two of those changes were extending the deadline for North Korean workers to return home from 12 months to 24 months — which Russia said was the minimum needed — and reducing the number of North Koreans being put on the U.N. sanctions blacklist from 19 to 15.

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/12/25/n-korea-says-its-pipe-dream-give-up-nukes/108912506/

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Rightfully, there has been much condemnation of the China-based companies that do business with North Korea and Chinese-North Korean entities that continue to operate. These entities make up the largest source of hard cash and material reinforcements for Kim Jong Un’s hermit kingdom, but Russia’s support of North Korea is also quite significant, and has grown alongside international condemnation of that regime’s belligerence.

Moscow’s assistance to Pyongyang has emerged not out of a desire to promote its nuclear program, but because Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, sees Kim very much like he see his own country: victims of a U.S.-led international system that tramples on their choices and sovereignty. Russia is itself under international sanctions intended to punish Moscow for its military actions in Ukraine. For Russia, sanctions that successfully force North Korea either to alter its military choices or lead to a change in its leadership would set a dangerous precedent—the possibility of regime change anywhere is never to be encouraged.

Pyongyang’s economic engagement with Moscow ranges from small enterprises to large schemes that help Russia more cheaply fulfill its goals. The U.S. State Department approximates that around 20,000 North Koreans are sent—most, forcibly—to work in Russia each year for Russian companies (some estimates say the number is as high as 50,000). North Korea’s largest money makers in Russia are in the fields of logging and construction. These workers live in “slave-like conditions,” are poorly fed and equipped, and only receive a small fraction of the salaries that they are due. The rest, allegedly, goes straight to Kim’s coffers.

According to James Hoare’s Historical Dictionary of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Russia has hosted North Korean labor camps since 1967, when the then-Soviet Union was shrinking its notorious gulag system. Many gulag camps had forced their prisoners to do hard, manual work; the arrival of North Koreans helped replace some of that cheap labor. These North Korean camps, which exist to this day, do the same kind of logging work in Siberia’s harsh, endless forests that their gulag predecessors once did.

North Korean construction workers toil in similarly miserable situations. They were spotted by Norwegian journalists working to finish the newly opened Zenit Arena in St. Petersburg that will be used during the 2018 World Cup. One worker told The Guardian that the men were earning money to help “facilitate the country’s defense.” German journalists have also found North Koreans working to repair and complete World Cup 2018 stadiums in Moscow and Ekaterinburg. Qatar, which will host the 2022 World Cup, has taken its lead from Russia and currently has 2,800 North Koreans working in part to build the infrastructure needed for the event.

In addition, there are a variety of small North Korean-owned businesses across Russia. These range from North Korean-owned, -operated, and -staffed restaurants in Russia’s far east, to small tourism operations. North Korea recently opened a travel agency in Russia to bring Russian tourists to North Korea, while a passenger and cargo ferry service between Vladivostok, Russia, and Rason, North Korea, was opened in May 2017. Russian businesses in Vladivostok often hire North Koreans to paint and decorate homes in their city.

While these workers may be the main conduit of Russian money into North Korea, Russia has aided the country in other ways. In 2014, it forgave 90 percent of the nearly $11 billion in debt that it (and the Soviet Union before it) was owed by North Korea. The remaining portion of the debt was to be repaid to Russia by deposits into an account that could then be used to grow Russian-North Korean ties and trade. To avoid the difficulties that western sanctions have placed on payments and financial transfers to North Korea, the two countries have an arrangement by which Russia pays Pyongyang in rubles.

In its latest tranche of sanctions on North Korea, the U.S. Treasury Department included some Russian individuals and Russian-linked companies that assist Pyongyang in laundering money and obtaining fuel, exposing the means through which Russia—like China—helps keep the lights on in North Korea.

Altogether, the total volume of trade between North Korea and Russia is quite small, though likely underreported. In 2016, the trade volume between the two countries was only $76.9 million, down from a high of $234.9 million in 2005. So why, then, is Moscow loath to crack down on Pyongyang? The answer may lie in the use of the West’s favorite instrument of international punishment: sanctions.

While Putin has said that North Korea’s nuclear program “is creating threats to security in North-east Asia,” he has also condemned the idea that it is possible to solve the North Korea issue with “sanctions and pressure alone” and warned against “driving North Korea in a corner.” For a Russia that remains under relatively heavy U.S. and European Union sanctions for its annexation of Crimea in 2014, its continued invasion of eastern Ukraine, and the shoot-down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014, helping North Korea stand firm against Western pressure is rather a matter of principle.

Resisting U.S. calls for strict sanctions on Pyongyang is yet another way for Putin to demonstrate to both his public and the international community that he will not give in to western pressure to change his behavior in Ukraine. Through Russian eyes, then, North Korea’s resolve in the face of American and international pressure is admirable and worth supporting. So while Russia may seem to go along with UN sanctions on North Korea, it works behind the scenes to make them as toothless as possible. Monday’s sanctions package, for example, originally would have banned the use of North Korean labor, but was weakened after Russian protests. Those concessions they do make on sanctioning North Korea are carefully calculated to give up as little as possible, continue aiding North Korea as much as possible, and maintaining the façade that Russia is a useful international partner.

When asked recently about the effect that sanctions were having on North Korea, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov asserted that “the imposed sanctions have not created any positive outcome.” Yet part of their failure can be chalked up to Russia’s refusal to truly adhere to these sanctions, and the Russian government’s continued insistence on maintaining its economic relationship with North Korea. There is unfortunately little to be done about Russia’s determination to undermine sanctions on North Korea. After three years under similar sanctions Russia has become adept at evading the worst strictures and is happy to help North Korea do the same.

A North Korea that shrivels under harsh sanctions is not an acceptable option for Moscow. To allow such a scenario would be to admit its own vulnerability to similar measures. The Kremlin is certainly not thrilled about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, but for now it is more important for birds of an anti-Western feather to flock together. Meanwhile, nations committed to halting North Korea’s belligerence will have to work harder and more creatively to both calm the North Korean situation and buttress the international order.

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/russia-north-korea-putin-kim-nuclear-united-nations-sanctions/539592/

The post Why Russia Won’t Help More on North Korea first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

“North Korea economic warfare works,” Mnuchin said Tuesday at the Delivering Alpha Conference in New York City. “We sent a message that anybody who wanted to trade with North Korea – we would consider them not trading with us.”

The Treasury Secretary echoed the words of the US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, by calling the fresh round of sanctions against Pyongyang “historic.” Mnuchin added “if China doesn’t follow these sanctions, we will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the US and international dollar system.”

Washington has, so far, been reluctant to impose economic sanctions on China over concerns of possible retaliatory measures from Beijing and the potentially catastrophic consequences for the global economy.

Washington runs a $350 billion annual trade deficit with Beijing. China also holds $1 trillion in US debt, which amounts to 28 percent of US Treasury bills, notes and bonds held by a foreign government.

US lawmakers, however, seemed to be more inclined to exert pressure on Beijing and other countries striking deals with Pyongyang as they demand a “supercharged” response to North Korea’s nuclear tests, including imposing sanctions on companies from China and any other country doing business in North Korea.

“I believe the response from the United States and our allies should be supercharged,” said Ed Royce, chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing Tuesday.

“We need to use every ounce of leverage… to put maximum pressure on this rogue regime,” he said, adding that “time is running out.” Royce also called on Washington to target major Chinese banks, including the Agricultural Bank of China and the China Merchants Bank for dealing with Pyongyang.

He also said China was apparently reluctant to follow through on the sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council (UNSC) against the North. “It’s been a long, long time of waiting for China to comply with the sanctions that we pass and, frankly, with the sanctions that the United Nations passed,” he said.

The committee chair went on to say the US could give Chinese banks and companies “a choice between doing business with North Korea or the United States.” He added that the US should also “go after banks and companies in other countries that do business with North Korea the same way.”

Committee members also expressed unease over the fact that the sanctions imposed on North Korea have so far been ineffective in preventing Pyongyang from developing its nuclear and missile programs.

“We’ve been played by the Kims for years,” Republican Representative Ted Poe said, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his predecessors, as reported by Reuters.

President Donald Trump also downplayed the role of the newly adopted sanctions later Tuesday. ”We think it’s just another very small step, not a big deal. I don’t know if it has any impact,” he told reporters at the start of a meeting with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Trump also said he already discussed the issue with his State Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He ominously added that “those sanctions are nothing compared to what ultimately will have to happen” without specifying what he meant by that.

The UNSC unanimously approved a new resolution on sanctions against Pyongyang on September 11. Following a series of behind-the-scenes negotiations Sunday, diplomats agreed not to ban oil exports into North Korea. Instead, the ninth set of restrictive sanctions against Pyongyang authorized an annual cap of 2 million barrels of refined petroleum products to North Korea.

It also banned the North’s textile exports – the second-biggest export for the country, which totals $752 million – according to data from the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency. Chinese and Russian negotiators managed to persuade the US delegation not to impose a travel ban or asset freeze on North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.

On Tuesday, the North Korean ambassador to Moscow said sanctions will not make his country change its policies. Pyongyang’s nuclear program helps it to deter the “hostile policy of the US,” Kim Yong-jae added.

Source: https://www.rt.com/usa/403118-usa-china-sanctions-north-korea/

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