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Treasury Knocks Over Yet Another North Korean Bank

Phillip Goldberg and Stuart Levey have done more to advance U.S. interests in five months than the entire East Asia Bureau of our State Department has done in two decades:

Treasury said in a statement that Amroggang Development Bank was being added to a list of proliferators of mass destruction because it was owned or controlled by North Korea’s Tanchon Commercial Bank.

Tanchon was previously hit with sanctions by both the United States and the United Nations Security Council for its involvement in Pyongyang’s proliferation activities.

Treasury said assets of Tanchon under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen and Americans are banned from any dealing with it. It said that Tanchon’s president, Kim Tong Myong, also was being added to the list of weapons proliferators.

Treasury described Amroggang as a Tanchon-related company run by Tanchon officials. It said Tanchon helps finance Korea Mining Development Corp’s sales of ballistic missiles and has been involved in Komid’s ballistic missile transactions with an Iranian industrial group. [Reuters]

Technically speaking, Treasury’s action adds Kim and Amroggang to the list of specially designated national under Executive Order 13382 (see my sidebar for more on that). Tanchon is the financial arm of Korean Mining Development Corporation, a/k/a KOMID, which has been sanctioned by Treasury for years.

2 Responses

  1. I don’t know if you wrote about this anywhere:

    U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday signed a defense authorization bill that calls for the administration to submit a report to Congress on whether to relist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism.

    The bill, authorizing implementation of US$680 billion in next year’s defense budget, stipulates that within 30 days of the Act’s enactment the Obama administration “shall submit to Congress a detailed report examining the conduct of the Government of North Korea since June 26, 2008, based on all available information to determine whether North Korea meets the statutory criteria for listing as a state sponsor of terrorism.”

    The State Department said in August that it was reviewing whether to relist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism in connection with North Korea’s alleged proliferation of missile and nuclear technology in recent months.