China Agrees to Sanction North Korea

Not much time to comment on this as I’m running late, but it seems China has agreed to sanction the DPRK over its nuclear test conducted earlier this year.

From Bloomberg:

China agreed for the first time to punish senior North Korean government officials for defying United Nations resolutions barring nuclear and missile tests, China’s deputy ambassador said.

Ambassador Liu Zhenmin said his government would support imposing a travel ban and asset freeze on a “large percentage” of 15 North Korean officials proposed by the U.S. and other Western nations as targets for UN sanctions.

The officials have not been named.

The article goes on to quote Yang Moo Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, who said that despite this development, China won’t ever completely abandon North Korea, an assessment I agree with. As we have discussed here many times before, China won’t ever do anything as drastic as to promote a North Korea collapse but its latest decision does show some significance. It is the first time China has publicly agreed to sanction North Korea over its nuclear weapons program.