Trump abruptly reverses Treasury's North Korea-related sanctions on Chinese shippers
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Source: NBC
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump suggested Friday that he would lift sanctions his Treasury Department had just announced it would impose on two Chinese shipping companies for allegedly violating existing prohibitions on providing goods and transportation services to North Korea.
"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 wrote on Twitter. "I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!"
The sanctions — which the White House did not immediately confirm that the president's tweet was in reference to — were actually announced Thursday by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is an agency under the Treasury Department.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders explained the president's decision as a courtesy to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with whom Trump broke off denuclearization talks in Hanoi last month.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-abruptly-reverses-treasury-s-north-korea-related-sanctions-chinese-n986376?cid=sm_npd_ms_fb_ma
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On the visit to South Korea by DNI Dan Coats, he was accompanied by former CIA Korea Team chief, Andrew Kim, who is now "retired" and working at Stanford. It is said that Coats made a formal visit with President Moon, and gave a classified intergovernmental presentation concerning North Korean issues. One of the few comments publicly revealed by Andrew Kim was that there are large differences in views between the South Korean administration and the US concerning the nature of an effective approach to denuclearization objectives.
(Source JTBC News 3.22) Number 2 story today. North Korea withdraws from Kaesong Liaison Office. No. 1 story on Channel A News Top Ten. It appears as if North Korea withdrew from the joint North South Liaison office as a response to increasing sanctions from the US.
Dan Coats cancelled his visit to Panmunjum for unknown reasons. Some Americans say North Korean withdrawal of its Kaesong Liaison delegation doesn't matter because...they're not Koreans? Because they don't like the Moon government anyway? It's just another "edge of cliff" maneuver by the North? Maybe they withdrew because the US completely disregarded advice from their South Korean ally at Hanoi and are currently blocking virtually all joint South Korean economic initiatives with the North. The office had been open for 190 days and was the first such joint office operated by the two Korean states since the Korean conflict.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few other measures that North Korea can take to damage relations with South Korea, and increase tensions, short of launching a missile. They could start disregarding or deconstructing the extensive measures agreed to in military agreements with South Korea to defuse tensions in the DMZ and the Joint Security Area, and the buffer zones restricting military air and ship activities north and south of the DMZ and Northern Limit Lines in the West and East Seas. Likely such measures would just be the beginning of an unproductive and dangerous escalation cycle. Such actions would have the effect of discrediting and destabilizing the Moon government, something about which conservatives in South Korea, and opponents to negotiations in the US could care less.
