US Secretary of State Pushes UN to Implement Strict Enforcement of North Korea Sanctions

This is probably another reason why the Kim regime is busy courting Russian support, in order to influence members of the United Nations to not strongly implement sanctions against North Korea:

The US government appears to be tightening the reins on the international community’s implementation of sanctions against North Korea. After the second North Korea-US summit ended without a joint agreement, the US first articulated the tough stance that it won’t lift sanctions until the North has completely denuclearized and then pushed the UN to keep member states on board with the tough sanctions.

On Mar. 13, the US State Department announced that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had met with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Washington, DC, that same day. During the meeting, the State Department said, the two leaders had discussed a range of issues, including the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, developments in Venezuela and the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

In regard to the Korean Peninsula, Pompeo appears to have told Guterres about the results of the North Korea-US summit and asked for his cooperation in implementing the UN Security Council’s sanctions against North Korea. A yearly report by a panel of experts that was released by the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea the previous day addressed North Korea’s violations of the sanctions, including ship-to-ship transfers. In recent days, Pompeo has been emphasizing that sanctions on North Korea were the decision not of the US but of the UN Security Council and that the US has built a completely international coalition to implement those sanctions.

Hankyoreh

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