Kim Jong Un went into the summit with one objective: relief from international sanctions crippling North Korea’s economy. Having come away empty-handed, North Korea is now inching toward provocation and simultaneously tugging at heartstrings.
North Koreans push a cart carrying cabbage in Hamhung, on the northeast coast, in November 2017. The United Nations said North Korea recorded its worst harvest for more than a decade in 2018. crippling North Korea’s economy.
“This is part of, at the very least, framing sanctions in a different way than most of the world knows of them,” said Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein, co-editor of the website North Korean Economy Watch and associate scholar with the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute. “To say that ‘Hey, it’s not just that we can’t export and import missile parts, it’s also causing our people to starve.
“The challenge is that both space launch vehicles and ICBMs are there — we can’t tell what is being loaded into vehicles,” said Melissa Hanham, a nuclear expert at the One Earth Future Foundation. “I don’t think anyone should freak out. There will be many more clues before there is any kind of launch.”
The U.S. has always considered space launches by North Korea problematic because it uses the same technology as long-range missiles. A 2012 deal between the Obama administration and North Korea for food aid in exchange for a freeze in uranium enrichment fell apart after North Korea attempted to send a satellite into orbit.
While humanitarian assistance is exempted from sanctions, the official said they still affected food production by limiting the availability of equipment, including tractors and harvesters, as well as chemicals such as fertilizers, pesticide and herbicide. Government-distributed rations were cut from 550 to 300 grams because of the shortage, according to the memo.
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