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Congress is marking up North Korea bills faster than I can write about them

Congress’s sentiment about Pyongyang today equates roughly to Cato the Elder’s sentiment about Carthage. (I mean this figuratively, for now, although I increasingly fear that sanctions are our last plausible strategy to prevent war.) It’s now moving more North Korea legislation than it has in the entire decade leading up to the passage of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act just over one year ago. I can no longer keep up with all of the bills, amendments, markups, and resolutions in what little spare time I still have.

  • H.R. 1644: The Foreign Affairs Committee has moved very quickly in marking up H.R. 1644, the KIMS Act, which toughens the NKSPEA to match or exceed new U.N. sanctions under UNSCR 2270 and UNSCR 2321. It would impose tough new secondary sanctions on foreign ports that fail to inspect North Korean cargo, foreign banks that discreetly connect North Korean banks to the financial system, governments that allow the use of North Korean slave labor, and states that reflag North Korean ships. The Committee Chair, Ed Royce, amended the bill at an action-packed Committee markup earlier this week. I haven’t had a chance to do a line-by-line comparison, although I noticed that the newer version expands a humanitarian exception for North Korean imports of gasoline and diesel fuel.
  • H.R. 479: Ted Poe and Brad Sherman’s bipartisan bill to force the Secretary of State to re-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism was amended to look like Ted Cruz and Cory Gardner’s bill. That means the House and Senate are coordinating their efforts and are serious about putting that bill on the President’s desk. I continue to predict that the Secretary of State will act on his own before that happens, but only because that legislation is advancing toward the President’s desk at such a deliberate pace. Frankly, I’m surprised the Secretary of State hasn’t already acted. This bill may be a necessary incentive to focus the administration’s priorities.
  • H. Res. 223: Ted Yoho, the new Asia Subcommittee Chairman, says China has been sanctioning the wrong Korea, and has introduced a new resolution calling for Xi Jinping to knock it off. (China’s escalation of this crisis, by waging economic war on South Korea, may call for a deterrent escalation of our own. The closure of a South Korean factory in China gives me the idea that our secondary sanctions against North Korea should focus their impact on regions in China that already have higher rates of unemployment. By joining forces with Japan and South Korea to concentrate the effect of sanctions on those regions, we can raise the political pressure on Xi Jinping. As with Kim Jong-un, it may take a threat to Xi’s political control to influence his behavior, or the behavior of those around him.)
  • H. Res. 92: Another bipartisan House resolution condemns North Korea’s missile tests, calls for the quick deployment of THAAD and the improvement of our missile defenses, and calls for the full enforcement of the new sanctions authorities that the U.N. and the U.S. have approved over the last year.
  • S. Res. 92: By a striking numerical coincidence, S. Res. 92, introduced by Senator Mike Lee of Utah, is also North Korea-related. It calls on the government to investigate the disappearance of David Sneddon. Members of Sneddon’s family have raised suspicions that North Korea may have been behind his disappearance in China in 2004.
  • What’s still missing is a reauthorization of the North Korean Human Rights Act, which has to happen this year or the law will expire. Expect to see that effort begin in the Senate and work its way back to the House later.

If there’s another nuke test in North Korea, you can expect to see a flood of member amendments and resolutions. There is, of course, still more that Congress can do, including:

  • tourist travel ban authority,
  • provisions that would require the public disclosure of which companies have investments in North Korea,
  • immunity and encouragement for fund managers to divest from those companies,
  • requiring the public disclosure of any North Korea-related beneficial ownership interests,
  • a flat-out ban on access to the dollar system by any bank or person that transacts with North Korea, and
  • perhaps most importantly for now, a comprehensive transaction licensing requirement for North Korea, although this loophole would be closed by putting North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Congress could also name and shame more of the banks and other entities that were dishonorably mentioned by the U.N. Panel of Experts. It could also make its voice heard on Kaesong, which Moon Jae-in has promised to reopen, despite the fact that this would violate multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. If South Korea violates U.N. sanctions, China, Malaysia, and Africa will draw the conclusion that the world isn’t serious, and a global enforcement coalition will never coalesce.

As with the U.N. resolutions, although there is still more Congress can do to create legal authorities for sanctions, Congress is approaching the point where it will have completed its to-do list, and the focus must shift to enforcement and implementation of the existing laws. Making sanctions work is increasingly about putting enough of the right people into the right positions to make an enforcement program effective. The slow pace of political appointments isn’t encouraging. Many of the necessary improvements to our North Korea policy await those key appointments: how we award grants, what we broadcast to the North Korean people, which refugees we admit, how we exploit the intelligence they provide, who coordinates the broader policy among squabbling agencies, and what we do about foreign governments that violate sanctions, use North Korean slave labor, or repatriate refugees to North Korea.

The vast majority of federal employees, of course, aren’t political; they’re career civil servants appointed under Subchapter I of Title 5. They’re the technocrats and experts who faithfully execute the laws and the President’s policies, regardless of who the president is. Although President Trump’s hiring freeze may be affecting their numbers to some degree, the freeze has broad exemptions for national security and public safety, which most eligible agencies have already invoked. The key enforcement agencies are badly understaffed with the career employees needed to enforce sanctions, but not because of the new hiring freeze. Many are working late nights and weekends out of dedication alone. The simple truth is that North Korea investigations, sanctions, and prosecutions just weren’t a priority for previous administrations, so most career employees were assigned to other duties. If personnel is policy, the new administration hasn’t yet changed that policy. Let’s hope it does soon. The administration says North Korea is a top priority, but so far, I’ve seen little evidence that its actions have matched its words.