Foreign Policy Research Institute A Nation Must Think Before it Acts Sanctions on North Korea: Business as Usual?

Sanctions on North Korea: Business as Usual?

The Diplomat

Many of the steps in the additional sanctions added by UN Security Council Resolution 2379 on December 22, 2017, were expected. Targeting oil and petroleum, export incomes, as well as revenues from foreign workers, are all natural steps if the international community wants to pressure North Korea. It’s still rather unclear what the end-goal is, but if sanctions are intended to make things more difficult for the North Korean economy, they can certainly have an impact to that end. These are the main points:

  • Exports of refined petroleum products will be capped at 500,000 barrels per year.
  • Crude oil transfers will be limited to 4 million barrels/year.
  • Within two years, UN member states are to have expelled all North Korean workers and managers.

When analyzing how this will impact North Korea, there are two sides to the story. On the one hand, as with all sanctions against North Korea, China (and to some extent, Russia) would likely not have agreed to them if Beijing believed that the new restrictions will create a real risk of severe social instability in North Korea that would risk spilling over China’s own borders. At the same time, it seems like the United States’ intention is to create economic difficulties so severe that the North Korean regime will crack and agree to negotiate the existence of its nuclear deterrent, at least according to the official, outward line. These two objectives appear to be mutually exclusive in the long run.

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