Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) welcomes the decision by the United States Department of the Treasury to apply targeted sanctions to top members of North Korea’s ruling regime.

In a press release, Adam J. Szubin, Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence said: “Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea continues to inflict intolerable cruelty and hardship on millions of its own people, including extrajudicial killings, forced labor, and torture.”

“The actions taken…by the Administration under an Act of Congress highlight the U.S. Government’s condemnation of this regime’s abuses and our determination to see them stopped.”

The UN Commission of Inquiry on human rights in North Korea found that “the gravity, scale and nature” of human rights violations in North Korea “reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”

Targeted sanctions against the perpetrators of crimes against humanity was one of the Commission’s recommendations. Other recommendations included a call for those responsible for crimes against humanity to be held accountable through referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC), an extension of the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in North Korea and the establishment of an UN-mandated structure and database “to help to ensure accountability for human rights violations,” building on “the collection of evidence and documentation work of the commission”.  It also called on China to respect the principle of non-refoulement and end its practice of forcibly repatriating North Korean refugees.

Benedict Rogers, CSW’s East Asia Team Leader said, “We are delighted that the United States has decided to link targeted sanctions specifically to the grave violations of human rights in North Korea, and to target key individuals, including Kim Jong-Un, responsible for these crimes. It is essential that the international community realises that change will only come when the leaders of the regime feel the pressure, and targeted sanctions is one means for applying pressure. We hope the European Union and others will follow, by linking sanctions to human rights violations and not only to the security issues and nuclear proliferation, and by carefully targeting sanctions on key leaders.”