The United Nations Security Council on Monday voted unanimously to pass its strongest sanctions yet on North Korea following its sixth ever successful nuclear missile launch and claims that the country now has a Hydrogen bomb it can place on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
The sanctions, while watered down from original drafts, fully ban the country’s textile exports and reduce its oil and petroleum exports. This means about 90 percent of North Korea’s exports are now banned, as well as a complete ban on the country’s overseas laborers that provide nearly $500 million in revenue. Additionally, all foreign investment with North Korea is cut off, and the regime’s assets will be frozen.
Han Tae Song, Pyongyang’s ambassador at a U.N. disarmament conference in Geneva, Switzerland, said Tuesday: “My delegation condemns in the strongest terms and categorically rejects the latest illegal and unlawful U.N. Security Council resolution,” according to Reuters.
“The forthcoming measures by [the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] will make the U.S. suffer the greatest pain it ever experienced in its history,” Song said, adding that the DPRK is “ready to use a form of ultimate means.”
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Song also said the U.S. is “fired up for political, economic, and military confrontation” and is “obsessed with the wild game of reversing the DPRK’s development of nuclear force which has already reached the completion phase,” Reuters reported.
The United Nations in August unanimously approved sanctions against North Korea in response to Kim Jong Un’s two successful intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in July.
Then, North Korea threatened “thousands-fold” revenge on the United States following those sanctions, which cut North Korea’s export revenue by $1 billion, or about a third. The sanctions banned North Korea from exporting coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood.
North Korea’s sixth nuclear missile test caused a 6.3 earthquake and was roughly five times as large as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. The test came hours after North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un claimed that it now had an H-bomb to put onto its long-range ICBMs.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has said that North Korea is “begging for war,” and that it’s time for the international community to impose the strongest possible sanctions against North Korea.
