THE nation denounced the Trump administration’s latest sanctions targeting cybercrimes that help finance its illicit nuclear weapons programme, accusing the United States of harbouring “wicked” hostility toward Pyongyang and vowing unspecified countermeasures.
The statement by a North Korean vice foreign minister came after the US Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on eight individuals and two firms, including North Korean bankers, for allegedly laundering money from cybercrime schemes.
The Treasury said North Korea’s state-sponsored hacking schemes have stolen more than US$3bil in mostly digital assets over the past three years, an amount unmatched by any other foreign actor, and that the illicit funds help finance the country’s nuclear weapons programme.
It said North Korea relies on a network of banking representatives, financial institutions and shell companies in North Korea, China, Russia and elsewhere to launder funds obtained through IT worker fraud, cryptocurrency heists and sanctions evasion.
The sanctions came even as US President Donald Trump continues to express interest in reviving talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Their previous nuclear discussions collapsed in 2019 during Trump’s first term amid disagreements over trading relief from US-led sanctions on the North for steps to dismantle Jong-un’s nuclear programme.
“Now that the present US administration has clarified its stand to be hostile towards the DPRK to the last, we will also take proper measures to counter it with patience for any length of time,” the North Korean vice-minister, Kim Un-chol, said in a statement, invoking the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
He said US sanctions and pressure tactics will never change the “present strategic situation” between the countries or alter the North’s “thinking and viewpoint.”
Jong-un has shunned any form of talks with Washington and Seoul since his fallout with Trump in 2019. — AP
