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.