The UN Security Council on Thursday expanded the list of North Korean bodies and individuals under sanctions for nuclear and missile activities, adding its atomic energy agency and two of its top officials.
Altogether, the council’s North Korea sanctions committee clamped five new organizations and five people under asset freezes and travel bans, and banned the import into the reclusive communist state of two weapons-related materials.
Announcement of the list followed a month of committee haggling after the Security Council expanded UN sanctions against North Korea in a June 12 resolution that responded to a nuclear test Pyongyang carried out on May 25.
ENTITIES
The entities sanctioned are North Korea’s General Bureau of Atomic Energy (GBAE) and four trading companies, said committee chairman Fazli Corman, Turkey’s UN Ambassador.
The individuals are Ri Je-son and Hwang Sok-hwa, both described as directors at the GBAE, one other nuclear official and two trading company directors.
The measure, binding on all 192 UN member states, greatly lengthens an existing blacklist that consisted only of two companies and a bank involved in Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Arms sales are a vital source of foreign currency for destitute North Korea, which has annual GDP of about US$17 billion and a broken economy that produces few other items it can export.
COMMITTEE
The sanctions committee includes all 15 Security Council members, among them China, the closest Pyongyang has to an ally. Western diplomats said Beijing had slowed the work of the committee but had in the end gone along with the sanctions.
The companies targeted were Namchongang Trading Corp and Hong Kong Electronics — both also hit by US sanctions announced on June 30 — as well as Korea Hyoksin Trading Corp and Korean Tangun Trading Corp.
Apart from Ri and Hwang, the people sanctioned were Namchongang director Yun Ho-jin, Ri Hong-sop, former director of North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear research center, and Han Yu-ro, director of Korea Ryongaksan General Trading Corp.
Western officials say Hong Kong Electronics is based on Iran’s Kish Island but is controlled by North Korea. They say all the companies were involved in nuclear weapon or ballistic missile activities.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
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The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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