North Korea slams U.S. sanctions on cybercrimes and says pressure tactics will fail

Then U.S. President Donald Trump, left, meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the North Korean side of the border at the village of Panmunjom in Demilitarized Zone, on June 30, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Thursday denounced the Trump administration’s latest sanctions targeting cybercrimes that help finance its illicit nuclear weapons program, accusing the United States of harboring “wicked” hostility toward Pyongyang and vowing unspecified countermeasures.

The statement by a North Korean vice foreign minister came after the U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on eight individuals and two firms, including North Korean bankers, for allegedly laundering money from cybercrime schemes.

The Treasury said North Korea’s state-sponsored hacking schemes have stolen more than US$3 billion in mostly digital assets over the past three years, an amount unmatched by any other foreign actor, and that the illicit funds help finance the country’s nuclear weapons program. The department said North Korea relies on a network of banking representatives, financial institutions and shell companies in North Korea, China, Russia and elsewhere to launder funds obtained through IT worker fraud, cryptocurrency heists and sanctions evasion.

The sanctions came even as U.S. President Donald Trump continues to express interest in reviving talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Their previous nuclear discussions collapsed in 2019 during Trump’s first term amid disagreements over trading relief from U.S.-led sanctions on the North for steps to dismantle Kim’s nuclear program.

“Now that the present U.S. administration has clarified its stand to be hostile towards the DPRK to the last, we will also take proper measures to counter it with patience for any length of time,” the North Korean vice minister, Kim Un Chol, said in a statement, invoking the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

He said U.S. sanctions and pressure tactics will never change the “present strategic situation” between the countries or alter the North’s “thinking and viewpoint.”

Kim Jong Un has shunned any form of talks with Washington and Seoul since his fallout with Trump in 2019. He has since made Russia the focus of his foreign policy, sending thousands of troops and large amounts of military equipment to help fuel President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, while pursuing an increasingly assertive strategy aimed at securing a larger role for North Korea in a united front against the U.S.-led West.

In a recent speech, Kim urged Washington to drop its demand for the North to surrender its nukes as a precondition for resuming diplomacy. He ignored Trump’s proposal to meet while the American president was in South Korea last week for meetings with world leaders attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Kim Tong-hyung, The Associated Press