Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
N. Korea-linked sanctions pulled back by Trump
Favor to Kim given as reason
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said on Friday that he was rolling back sanctions linked to North Korea that his administration imposed just a day before.
“It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea,” Trump said on Twitter. “I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!”
Trump appeared to confuse the day that the sanctions were announced, saying the move occurred Friday rather than Thursday.
The Treasury Department on Thursday imposed new sanctions on two Chinese shipping companies that it says have been helping North Korea evade international sanctions. The sanctions linked to North Korea were the first that the Treasury Department had imposed since late last year and came less than a month after a summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader, collapsed in Hanoi, Vietnam, without a deal.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said the decision was a favor to Kim.
“President Trump likes Chairman Kim, and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary,” she said.
Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, personally signed off on the sanctions and hailed the decision in a statement accompanying them Thursday.
“The United States and our like-minded partners remain committed to achieving the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea and believe that the full implementation of North Korea-related U.N. Security Council resolutions is crucial to a successful outcome,” Mnuchin said in the statement.
The White House had said Thursday’s sanctions were evidence the U.S. was maintaining pressure on North Korea in an effort to coax its leader to give up his nuclear weapons program.
Treasury and State Department officials, including
career staff members and political appointees, spend months carefully crafting sanctions based on intensive intelligence gathering and legal research.
Current and former Treasury Department officials were stunned by Trump’s decision Friday. Some said they wondered if the move was planned in advance, as a gesture to Kim. Others feared that America’s vaunted sanctions program had been compromised.
“For an administration that continues to surprise, this is another first — the president of the United States undercutting his own sanctions agency for imposing sanctions on Chinese actors supporting North Korea,” said John Smith, former director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, who left the department last year. “It’s a win for North Korea and China and a loss for U.S. credibility.”
LIAISON OFFICE EXODUS
The move comes as North Korea abruptly on Friday pulled out from a liaison office with South Korea near the border.
North Korean staff members at the office left on “instructions from the superior authority,” according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry — an apparent reference to Kim.
North Korea’s withdrawal
came after satellite images released earlier this month suggested the North has rebuilt rocket launch and test sites.
In South Korea, meanwhile, the North’s decision to pull out of the liaison office sent a chill through South Korean President Moon Jaein’s efforts for rapprochement with North Korea.
It also cast doubts on the future of other cross-border initiatives such as sports and cultural exchanges and linking the rail systems of the two Koreas.
“The North Koreans are masters of public pressure, and it’s clear they have decided that is what is necessary at the moment for both the United States and South Korea,” said Mintaro Oba, a speechwriter at West Wing Writers and a former diplomat at the State Department’s Korea desk.
Oba said the withdrawal from the office does not mean the “broader process” is falling apart and could be a tactic intended to put pressure on Seoul and Washington for concessions.
But Oba said there was also a risk that hard-liners are “taking the wheel” in Pyongyang after Hanoi, with the failure of that summit potentially undermining the domestic leverage of proponents of dialogue. “We don’t know the answers, but these are important potential factors to consider.”
Moon’s top national security adviser convened an emergency meeting to discuss the surprise move from North Korea. Chun Hae-sung, the vice minister of unification, told reporters that the North’s decision to pull out is “unfortunate and regrettable.”
“Though North Korean staff has pulled out, South Koreans at the office will continue working.” Chun said. According to a Unification Ministry statement, North Korea notified that it “will not mind the South remaining in the office.”
Chun said a number of North Korean officials left the liaison office carrying documents, but most of the equipment was left behind.
While the liaison office
was one of the main agreements reached in three summits between Moon and Kim last year, Chun said it’s too early to say whether North Korea is backing out of the deals.
“We don’t think this could be called a violation of an agreement,” Chun said. “We want to monitor the situation for a bit longer and respond to the developments, instead of making predictions or premature judgments.”
The liaison office opened last September in the city of Kaesong just north of the border between the two Koreas to foster closer bilateral ties. Kim and Moon reached an agreement to open the office during their historic summit meeting in April.
Last week, Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui warned that Pyongyang was
considering suspending talks with Washington unless the United States changes its stance after the breakdown of the Hanoi summit.
Choe accused the United States of taking a “gangster-like stand,” but also appeared to leave a small window open for diplomacy by describing the chemistry between Trump and Kim as “mysteriously wonderful.” She said a final decision on whether to continue talks would be announced soon by Kim.