In a joint statement, the US, Japan, and South Korea strongly criticised North Korea’s recent ballistic missile launches, following the US decision to impose sanctions on people linked to Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.On Thursday, Russia and China blocked a US-led push to tighten UN sanctions on North Korea after it pulled out nearly 2 dozen ballistic missiles this year.
The statements of Security Council for North Korea
It was the first time the Security Council had publicly split over North Korea when the first sanctions were implemented in 2006.
“Since September 2021, the DPRK has substantially enhanced the frequency and scale of all its ballistic missile launches,” said US State secretary Antony Blinken, Japanese Foreign Affairs minister Hayashi Yoshimasa, & South Korean Foreign Affairs minister Park Jin, referring to the country by its formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The Far Eastern Bank & Bank Sputnik, also Russian institutions, were classified as conducting transactions supporting North Korean organisations, according to the restrictions.
Statements of Treasury secretary
In a statement, Under Treasury secretary for Terrorism & Financial Intelligence Brian E Nelson said that the sanctions targeted “supporters of the DPRK’s WMD & ballistic missile programmes, and also foreign financial institutions which have knowingly provided substantial financial services to the DPRK government.”
The US Treasury further sanctioned Jong Yong Nam, a Belarusian, for an organisation linked to North Korea’s already blacklisted Second Academy of Natural Sciences (SAN S) & Air Koryo Trading Corporation (AKTC), that it claimed was used to to provide the Ministry of Rocket Industry to electrical components and dual-use goods like transistors & hydraulic system components.
According to the Report
According to the report, AKTC was also utilised to ship expensive products to North Korea. A request for response from Reuters news agency was not immediately returned by North Korea’s UN mission in New York.
The US, South Korea, and Japan all stated that they were “open to talks with DPRK without preconditions” and that they will strengthen trilateral cooperation in the pursuit of complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
They also expressed their “sad disappointment” over the Security Council draught resolution’s failure, noting that 13 of the 15 members of the council had voted in favour of it. The United Nations General assembly will now take up the matter.
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