WASHINGTON--The United States on Wednesday sanctioned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the first time, citing "notorious abuses of human rights," in a move that diplomats say will incense the nuclear-armed country.
The sanctions, the first to target any North Koreans for rights abuses, affect property and other assets within U.S. jurisdiction and extend to 10 other individuals and five government ministries and departments, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement. The sanctions place those officials on a blacklist making them radioactive to major financial institutions and companies while freezing any assets they may already have in U.S banks.
"Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea continues to inflict intolerable cruelty and hardship on millions of its own people, including extrajudicial killings, forced labor, and torture," Acting Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Adam J. Szubin said in the statement. In North Korea, the leader is the subject of state-mandated adulation and considered infallible.
In a report by the U.S. State Department to Congress, Kim Jong Un topped a list of those responsible for serious human rights abuses and censorship in North Korea. Many of the abuses happen in North Korea's political prisoner camps, which hold between 80,000 and 120,000 prisoners including children, the report said.
The Treasury statement said he had "engaged in, facilitated, or been responsible for an abuse or violation of human rights by the Government of North Korea or the Workers' Party of Korea."
The sanctions also named lower-level officials such as Choe Pu Il, the minister of People's Security, as directly responsible for abuses. Senior U.S administration officials said the new sanctions demonstrated the administration's greater focus on human rights in North Korea, an area that had long been secondary to Washington's efforts to halt Pyongyang's nuclear program.
The report was "the most comprehensive" to date of individual North Korean officials' roles in forced labor and repression. They said the findings were based on an earlier United Nations report and accounts from civil society groups and the South Korean government.
