After the Talks, Economic Warfare?

Another Shot Across the Bow? Barry Briggs at NKZone has a very interesting post up on U.S. sanctions against a Macau-based bank that’s been helping North Korea launder its money. This should be read as a further development in the supernote story. Previous developments here and here.

Update: CNN (remember them?) is now reporting that Secretary of State Rice is threatening to freeze North Korean assets.

“We’re not sitting still, you know, we’re working on anti-proliferation measures that help to protect us,” Rice said in an interview conducted on Thursday with the New York Post, a transcript of which was released by the State Department.

“The president signed an executive order, if you remember that freezes assets and some entities that we believe that are engaging in proliferation trade,” she said.

With the talks already in deadlock because of North Korea’s insistence on being supplied with a light-water nuclear reactor, reports said that Pyongyang had gone further and threatened to boost nuclear weapons production if its demand was not met.