US imposes new sanctions on N. Korea

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The Obama administration expressed heightened concern Monday over threats of war from nuclear-armed North Korea and issued new sanctions against the communist nation’s primary exchange bank and several senior government officials.

In the past three months, Pyongyang, under its enigmatic young leader, Kim Jong Un, has defied the United States and other world powers by testing an intercontinental ballistic missile and testing a third nuclear bomb. Its latest salvo: a declaration carried through state media that it was canceling the 60-year armistice that maintains peace on the Korean peninsula.

Washington is walking a tight line. It is trying not to overplay the danger from an attention-seeking regime infamous for its bluster but has to take the North’s threats of possible military action seriously. The U.S. also is treaty-bound to provide support for South Korea or Japan in the event of any aggression.

“We are certainly concerned by North Korea’s bellicose rhetoric,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday. “The threats that they have been making follow a pattern designed to raise tension and intimidate others.”

In an effort to combat North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic-missile programs, the Obama administration issued a series of sanctions Monday.

The Treasury Department designated North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank as a WMD proliferator and imposed similar punitive measures against Paek Se-Bong, the chairman of North Korea’s Second Economic Committee, which oversees production of North Korea’s ballistic missiles. The designation freezes any assets in the U.S. and bans Americans from doing business with the bank or Paek.