►  Most extensive sanctions against North Korea are imposed due to nuclear development efforts. The ultimate purpose of these sanctions is to coerce North Korea into following the international order such as Non-proliferation Treaty. And there would be several goals of the sanctions, including punishing North Korea for attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, changing such behaviors, or at least bringing it back to negotiations, and last but not least, giving warnings to the rest of the world.

► Author shows how North Korea's behavior toward nuclear arms will change due to new rising issues in the international society and explains different scopes, kinds, and differences in sanctions.

Many people know that extensive sanctions against North Korea have been imposed and reinforced by international society due to its nuclear development efforts. However, those who are aware of the scopes, kinds, and their differences depending on sanction authorities are few.

The most well-known and multilateral one is the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR), which has been imposed since 2006 and expanded to the whole economic sector in 2016. According to the UNSCR 2270, 2321, 2371, 2375, 2379 adopted between 2016 and 2017, the critical provisions included caps on i) the imports of oil and refined petroleum products, ii) the bans on the export of coal, minerals, seafood, textiles, and even labor, and iii) the restrictions on bulk cash, joint venture, fishing rights, and the scientific and technical cooperation, etc. UNSCRs mainly focus on minimizing the inflow and outflow of resources and foreign currency in North Korea.

The most powerful and bilateral sanctions are the United States' sanctions against North Korea. The origin of North Korea sanctions imposed by the U.S. is the Trading with the Enemy Act, as North Korea has been labeled as a state sponsor of terrorism from 1988 to 2008, and since 2017. It is also reinforced by the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act in 2016 including the bans on the imports and exports of goods, services, technologies, and investment. Later it was integrated into the North Korea Sanction Regulations in 2018 by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC’s). The critical provisions of this sanctions program are the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list and ‘secondary boycott’ measures against businesses trading with North Korea.

The other pillar of the U.S. sanction against North Korea is the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security. These regulations apply to all the states that presume to trade with the U.S. However, to the ‘Country Group E(1)’ to which North Korea belongs, products related to the technologies originated by the U.S. are strictly prohibited at export. Here, ‘export’ is legally interpreted as ‘transfer’. Therefore, the Tamiflu shipment to North Korea by ‘trucks’ was not allowed in 2018, despite the ‘trucks’ would not remain in North Korea and return after all.

Besides the UN and the U.S., there are several sanction authorities, such as South Korea, Japan, the EU, and Australia, that have imposed bilateral sanctions against North Korea. The contents of their sanctions are basically in line with the UNSCR but less comprehensive and meticulous than those of the U.S.

The ultimate purpose of these sanctions is to coerce North Korea into following the international order such as Non-proliferation Treaty. And there would be several goals of the sanctions, including punishing North Korea for attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, changing such behaviors, or at least bringing it back to negotiations, and last but not least, giving warnings to the rest of the world that any state does not follow the order would suffer the fallout from the sanctions.

So far, the sanctions have been achieving most of the goals in one way or another: As North Korea has suffered from losing its foreign trade since 2016, it came out to a negotiating table in 2018 and 2019, and there has been no other state yet following North Korea’s nuclear development path. The negotiations in 2018 and 2019 were not enough to succeed in changing North Korea’s behaviors, but this is the pitiful result of the bargaining game, not that of sanctions. The role of sanctions that dragged North Korea in front of the table was actually successful as what North Korea demanded in return for dismantling the Yongbyon nuclear reactor was the lifting of five UN sanctions resolutions.

Some pointed out the ethics of sanctions, arguing that the comprehensive sanction mechanism is substantially targeting the North Korean residents rather than the leader and the elites. Moreover, they questioned that it could mislead North Koreans by providing a plausible excuse for the North Korean leader, and regime for its economic failure when the people suffer from the fallout of sanctions. However, such results are fundamentally caused by North Korea’s distorted distribution mechanism that allocates resources first and mainly to military activities including nuclear development, and use the rest for improving the livelihoods of the public. And North Koreans are not blind to such faults of the regime any longer after the Arduous March in the 1990s.

Others might criticize the effectiveness of sanctions, arguing that there are many holes in the sanctions due to the Sino-North partnership. China, if not Russia or South Korea, has been the closest political supporter, the biggest trading partner, and the kindest social and cultural exchanger to North Korea. However, the sanction regime since 2016 could be relative works due to the cooperation of China and Russia which had agreed upon imposing such sanctions on North Korea.  

The real problem is impending now as we have entered into the New Cold War in the course of history. The year of 2020 would be marked with the Great Decoupling between China and the U.S., which has been triggered by the U.S.-China trade war in 2018 and traced back to Obama’s Pivot to Asia and Xi Jinping’s Chinese Dream in 2012. The New Cold War appears to have concretely shaped Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This is also traced back to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. North Korea would, at least, shrewdly watch for, not to say seize, an opportunity to break through the sanction regime.

North Korea warned its ‘New Way’ of 2020 if the talks with the U.S. started in 2018, would have no progress till the end of 2019. In December 2019, the lifting of sanctions on North Korea proposed by China and Russia was unsuccessful. It is not surprising that China and Russia have opposed or delayed the U.S. efforts to impose further sanctions against North Korea, but their vetoes in May 2022 marked the first public split at the UN Security Council since 2006.

In conclusion, the U.S.- China competition or rivalry, paved the way for the New Cold War. In the wake of the critical junctures described above, the New Cold War became path-dependent, and cast its shadow on the Korean peninsula. As the Cold war did in the 1940s, the détente in the 1970s and the end of the Cold war in the 1990s, the geopolitics of inter-Korean relations will follow the New Cold War’s track. Therefore, the UN’s new sanctions on North Korea will be difficult to achieve, North Korea will take a breath for a while, but the Korean peninsula will be frozen again. And this could be only changed when another critical juncture of ending the New Cold War comes.

* Special thanks to Mr. Jacco Zwetsloot, host of the NK News Podcast, for inspiring this article’s topics and discussion.