U.S. sanctions leader of N. Korea

The United States imposed economic sanctions Wednesday on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and other government officials for their role in human rights abuses in the isolated country, particularly the running of forced labor camps and the torture and executions of dissidents.

The unusual but not unprecedented step of blacklisting a head of state is part of a concerted effort to step up pressure on Pyongyang that began in March when the U.N. Security Council and then the United States imposed harsh restrictions on trade with North Korea over its testing of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

The Treasury Department sanctions, backed by a State Department report on human rights abuses in the country, builds on a U.N. Commission of Inquiry report released in 2014. That report accused senior members of the military regime, including Kim, of overseeing crimes against humanity.

The blacklist names 10 people other than Kim, and five government institutions involved in monitoring North Koreans and keeping an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 people in camps for political prisoners. Officially, it freezes any assets they may have in the United States and bars Americans from interacting with them — both of which are limited to nonexistent.

But officials said the sanctions would have a global ripple effect, and might give pause to other government officials who otherwise operate fairly anonymously.

Kim now joins the company of other authoritarian leaders who have been judged responsible under U.S. sanctions law for horrific conditions in their countries. They include Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

“We made the judgment he is rather plainly, ultimately responsible for the actions of his regime, including its repressive policies toward its own people,” the administration official said.