Vol. 80/No. 11      March 21, 2016

 

New UN sanctions, US war ‘games’ threaten NKorea

 
The U.N. Security Council voted a range of new trade and shipping sanctions against North Korea March 2 that U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power called the strongest “in more than two decades.” On March 7, Washington and Seoul kicked off one of their largest joint military maneuvers on the Korean Peninsula, mobilizing 300,000 South Korean and 15,000 U.S. troops. The annual exercise, called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle 2016, is aimed at intimidating the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the North.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry responded with a statement protesting the Washington-Seoul maneuvers, calling them “dangerous war rehearsals.”

The new U.N. sanctions — introduced by Washington and Beijing and passed unanimously — mandate the inspection of all cargo to and from North Korea, bans the shipment of jet fuel and all weapons sales, and restricts exports of coal, gold, titanium ore and rare earth minerals.

More than 90 percent of North Korea’s foreign trade is with China. The Nikkei Asian Review reports the Chinese government has already begun implementing the coal ban at Dandong, China’s largest city bordering North Korea. In a concession to Beijing, the trade ban excludes oil exports to North Korea and the contracting out of North Korean workers in other countries. Thousands of workers from North Korea work in northeast China, bringing sorely needed income to the Koreans.

Philippine authorities announced March 5 that they had seized a North Korean freighter, one of 31 North Korean ships listed by the U.N. as banned from entering foreign ports. The ship was unloading palm kernels.

At the same time Beijing barred cargo ship Grand Karo from docking in Rizhao, and two other freighters on the U.N. blacklist sailed away after being anchored off Chinese ports.

The pretext for the punishing new sanctions, which hit working people the hardest, is the North’s Jan. 6 test of a small nuclear weapon and the successful Feb. 7 launch of a communications satellite. The Security Council demands Pyongyang end its nuclear weapons program, but says nothing about Washington’s deployment of nuclear weapons on U.S. ships and warplanes in the region.

Washington and North Korea officially remain in a state of war. The U.S. government has refused to sign a peace treaty with the North, 63 years after the Korean people fought to a standstill U.S.-led, U.N.-uniformed forces that divided the Korean Peninsula in two.

Washington has refused repeated demands by the North Korean government to agree to an end to the war, saying Pyongyang has to agree to “denuclearization” first.

War ‘games’ target North Korea
With their habitual cynicism, U.S. commanders informed the North Korean government that their two-month military exercises with Seoul, with hundreds of thousands of ground, air, naval and special operations troops, has a “non-provocative nature.”

According to the Washington Post, the maneuvers include practicing for strikes against nuclear and missile facilities as well as “decapitation” raids to simulate elimination of North Korea’s central leadership.

The same day the Security Council adopted the sanctions, the South Korean National Assembly passed a “counterterrorism” bill expanding the power of the government’s National Intelligence Service, allowing it to wiretap and access financial records of anyone it considers a terror suspect.

The March 2 vote took place after the Minjoo Party, the main opposition party, ended a nine-day filibuster protesting the bill. The entire opposition walked out of the assembly and the bill was passed with only the votes of the ruling Saenuri Party.  
 
 
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