U.S. Slaps Sanctions on North Korea Over Use of Nerve Agent in Assassination
By RICK GLADSTONEMARCH 6, 2018
North Korea ordered the assassination last year of its leader’s estranged half brother with a banned nerve agent, an act
that has caused the United States to impose new sanctions on the country, the State Department said on Tuesday.
Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, was killed Feb. 13, 2017, with VX, a deadly nerve
agent used in prohibited chemical weapons of mass destruction that North Korea is known to have stockpiled.
The State Department announcement said that the United States had formally determined on Feb. 22
that North Korea was responsible and that the sanctions took effect on Monday.
Under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991, the finding added to existing American
sanctions "targeting unlawful North Korean activities," the department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, said in the statement.
The announcement by the State Department came on the same day
that South Korean officials said the North was willing to talk with the United States about ending the crisis over its missiles and nuclear arsenal.
Nauert said that The United States strongly condemns the use of chemical weapons to conduct an assassination,