Seoul: North Korea said today it would close one of the last remaining channels of communication with the US in protest at sanctions on leader Kim Jong-Un for human rights abuses. The North’s foreign ministry notified the US government that it would effectively halt all communications with Washington through the North’s office at the United Nations in New York, state-run KCNA said.
“We…have notified the US that we would completely end all official communications through New York,” it said. The North’s UN office has long served as a rare avenue of formal and informal communications with the US including past talks on nuclear disarmament in the North.
In the message sent through its UN office Sunday, Pyongyang said all bilateral issues would be handled based on its wartime laws from now on, including two Americans currently detained in the North. Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old college student, was sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour in March for stealing a propaganda banner from a hotel. Korean-American missionary Kim Dong-Chul is also serving a jail term on charges of subversion and espionage.
“We have notified the US that the US would be entirely held responsible for all unfortunate developments that may occur in the future,” the KCNA said without elaborating. The warnings came days after the North slammed the new US sanctions targeting Kim as a “declaration of a war” and vowed to take strong retaliatory measures.
The latest sanctions, which described Kim directly responsible for a long list of serious human rights abuses, are the first that name the leader of the isolated, nuclear-armed state. Pyongyang, in its first reaction published last Thursday, urged Washington to retract the sanctions, warning that it would otherwise cut off “every lever and channel for diplomatic contact” between the two countries.
