House passes bill to impose new sanctions on North Korea

The House overwhelmingly voted Thursday to impose new sanctions on North Korea amid heightened tensions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

The vote, 419-1, targets North Korea’s shipping industry and use of slave labor. 

It also requires that the Trump administration report to Congress within 90 days on whether North Korea should be reinstated on the government’s state sponsors of terror list. Such a designation would trigger more sanctions, including restriction on U.S. foreign assistance.

Adm. Harry Harris Jr., the top American military officer in the Pacific, has warned lawmakers that it’s a question of when, not if, Pyongyang successfully builds a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the U.S.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., was the sole member to vote against the measure. The Senate will take it up next.

The bipartisan legislation is aimed at thwarting North Korea’s ambitions by cutting off access to the cash the regime needs to follow through with its plans. 

The measure is sponsored by Rep. Ed Royce of California, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the committee’s senior Democrat.

Specifically, the bill bars ships owned by North Korea, or by countries that refuse to comply with U.N. resolutions against it, from operating in American waters or docking at U.S. ports. Goods produced by North Korea’s forced labor would be prohibited from entering the United States, according to the legislation.

Anyone who uses the slave labor that North Korea exports to other countries would be subject to sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the bill states. At times when the nation is facing unusual or extraordinary threats, the president has wide authority under the law, including the power to block or prohibit transactions involving property located in the U.S.

Royce said companies from Senegal to Qatar to Angola import North Korean workers, who send their salary back to Pyongyang, earning the regime billions of dollars in hard currency each year.

“This is money that Kim Jong-un uses to advance his nuclear and missile program, and also pay his generals, buying their loyalty to his brutal regime,” he said. “That is what the high-level defectors that I meet with say.  So let’s squeeze his purse.”

Last weekend, a North Korean midrange ballistic missile apparently failed shortly after launch, the third test-fire failure this month but a clear message of defiance. North Korean ballistic missile tests are banned by the United Nations because they’re seen as part of the North’s push for a nuclear-tipped missile that can hit the U.S. mainland.

The launch comes as both sides in the escalating crisis are flexing their military muscle. President Donald Trump has sent a nuclear-powered submarine and the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group to Korean waters. North Korea last week conducted large-scale, live-fire exercises on its eastern coast.

The U.S. and South Korea are installing a missile defense system and their two navies are staging joint military drills.

The missile defense system, known as THAAD, employs six truck-mounted launchers that can fire up to 48 interceptors at incoming missiles detected by the system’s x-band radar.