This afternoon, the Treasury Department finally announced its long anticipated sanctions against North Korea, in the form of a sweeping new executive order. The order, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, authorizes the blocking of assets of “any person” providing what Treasury calls “material support” for North Korea’s WMD proliferation, money laundering, […]
That’s funny, I thought North Korea liked the idea of unification.
The traitor talked about “unification tax,” sheer nonsense, at a time when the situation prevailing in Korea is so tense that a war may break out any moment. This is no more than sophism let loose by an idiot who knows nothing about reunification, insensitive […]
Robert Einhorn, President Obama’s special adviser for non-proliferation and arms control, is visiting Seoul and Tokyo this week. He is accompanied by Daniel Glaser, who works with Treasury’s Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and who was a key architect of the Banco Delta Asia sanctions in 2005 and 2006. At the risk […]
According to multiple newspaper reports published since late last week, the Obama Administration’s new asset-freezing campaign against North Korea began in earnest in June. The Treasury Department, having identified about 200 accounts worldwide suspected of storing the proceeds of banned weapons sales, currency counterfeiting, counterfeit cigarettes and Viagra, proliferation, drug trafficking, and other things […]
The Treasury Department has announced that the governments of Sao Tome and North Korea will henceforth be subject to the “enhanced due diligence” requirements of Section 312 of the USA PATRIOT Act. The measures apply to U.S. financial institutions maintaining correspondent accounts for “foreign banks operating under a banking license issued by” North Korea. […]
I’m apparently not the only one who cocked an eyebrow at the refusal of a State Department spokesman recently to rule out applying new sanctions to be directed at North Korea to third-country entities.
The United States Wednesday did not preclude the possibility of freezing North […]
The Joongang Ilbo is reporting that Clinton Administration alumnus and counter-proliferation expert Robert Einhorn is going to be put in charge of “streamlining the process by which it implements” international sanctions against North Korea, sanctions that are likely to be enhanced after an international investigation found that North Korea torpedoed and sank the South Korean […]
The Korea Times reports that since its establishment in 1959, North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank has been the regime’s “main foreign exchange bank,” with “branch offices in France, Australia, Kuwait, Hong Kong and Beijing.” The Times also informs us that the bank now finds itself the defendant in a multi-million dollar lawsuit in a […]
One of the most important offices in the subterranean warrens of the Treasury Department is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Center, or FINCEN, whose mission is to combat illicit finance and money laundering, and whose global power derives from its influence within a global body of counterpart agencies from governments worldwide known as the Financial Action […]
Klingner, formerly a CIA analyst and a private consultant with the Eurasia Group, has been with Heritage since 2007. He’s also a daily reader of this site. Here’s a sample of his assessment of the current situation:
Pyongyang is increasingly desperate to have the UN sanctions removed. Obama administration officials have commented that the […]
Having finally found time to read all of David Rose’s excellent Vanity Fair piece on North Korea’s supernote counterfeiting operation, I agree absolutely with Richardson and Curtis; it’s an excellent piece of journalism. For a fuller understanding, it should be read in the context of two others. Stephen Mihm’s New York Times report […]
A year ago, who would have suspected that we’d be celebrating the replacement of a liberal accommodationist named George W. Bush with a hard line neocon named Barack Obama, who would finally show signs of grasping not just the reality of North Korea’s bad faith, but some of the very best tools for breaking it? […]
The Washington Post is reporting that President Obama is forming an inter-agency team, much like the Illicit Activities Initiative that David Asher headed in G.W. Bush’s first term, to coordinate sanctions against North Korea:
The White House is forming an interagency team to coordinate sanctions efforts against North Korea with other nations, senior administration officials said […]
This is going to be a big deal. By the time I have time to update this post, the world financial system will have started purging itself of its links to North Korea. More later.
Update: Call it Plan B light, and quite possibly a prelude to better things, but this by itself will have a […]
He’s best known for saying things that make us cringe, but even Joe Biden is on message on North Korea:
“It is important that we make sure those sanctions stick and those sanctions prohibit them from exporting or importing weapons,” Biden said. “This is a matter of us now keeping the pressure on.” [AP]
And since everyone […]