U.S. adds N. Korea sanctions

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration reacted with new sanctions and blunt warnings Monday to a North Korean declaration that it had “completely scrapped” the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.

Sharpening tensions on the peninsula, the North Korean regime declared in the party newspaper Rodong Sinmun that the 60-year-old truce was over and “the time for final showdown has arrived.” It severed a hotline that has been used to prevent an unintended confrontation between North Korea and South Korea and angrily condemned a 13,000-troop U.S.-South Korean military exercise that began Monday.

But while expressing concern at the north’s actions, Obama administration officials insisted they would not seek to ease tensions, as past administration have done, by providing aid in exchange for promises to scale back the weapons program.

“The United States will not play the game of accepting empty promises or yielding to threats,” Thomas Donilon, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, said in a speech to the Asia Society in New York. “To get the assistance it desperately needs and the respect it claims it wants, North Korea will have to change course.”

Donilon announced that the administration was issuing sanctions aimed at cutting off the Foreign Trade Bank of North Korea from the U.S. financial system, saying the bank provides financing for Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programs. The punishments, which also blacklist three individual North Korean officials, come on top of financial sanctions imposed last week by the U.N. Security Council.

Donilon also warned Pyongyang, which is suspected of helping the Iranian arms programs, that the United States considers any sale of banned weapons technology a “grave threat” to the United States and “will hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences.”

While North Korea has previously threatened to void the armistice, U.S. officials and private analysts are increasingly concerned that the North’s mounting threats are a signal that it could soon lash out at South Korea.

Pyongyang responded furiously last week to the U.N.’s sanctions, which were imposed by unanimous vote in response to North Korea’s Feb. 12 nuclear test. It has warned that planes and vessels need to stay away from sections of the East Sea and Yellow Sea, hints that it may be considering more missile tests.

South Korea’s new president, Park Guen-hye, said during her first Cabinet meeting Monday that the country needed to “deal strongly with the North Korean provocation.” She also said her government was prepared to work to build trust between North and South Korea.