§9201 Findings; Purposes

Summary

The United States finds that North Korea has repeatedly broken its promises to give up its nuclear programs and ignored United Nations Security Council orders to stop developing, testing, and producing weapons of mass destruction. North Korea has shared sensitive nuclear and missile technology, making the spread of these weapons more likely. It has been tied to illegal activities like arms sales, drug trafficking, counterfeiting U.S. currency, cyberattacks, and stealing U.S. intellectual property. North Korea left the Korean War armistice and carried out violent acts against South Korea, including sinking the warship Cheonan on March 26, 2010 (46 killed), shelling Yeonpyeong on November 23, 2010 (4 civilians killed), the DarkSeoul cyberattacks on March 20, 2013, and planting land mines on August 4, 2015 that maimed 2 soldiers. The country runs brutal prison camps holding as many as 200,000 people in terrible conditions, and it has put weapons and luxury goods ahead of its people while defying U.N. resolutions 1695 (2006), 1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), 2087 (2013), and 2094 (2013). Entities that do business with North Korea without strong safeguards help its illicit acts and undercut those U.N. resolutions. North Korea’s actions, including cyberattacks such as against Sony Pictures, are seen as an imminent threat to U.S. and allied security, the global economy, U.S. forces, the world financial system, nonproliferation efforts, and the people of North Korea. It has also sponsored terrorism, including attempts to kill defectors and shipments of weapons to terrorists. The law directs the United States to use nonmilitary tools to address this crisis, to gain diplomatic leverage to negotiate changes in North Korea’s behavior, to help relieve suffering in North Korea, and to reaffirm the goals set out in section 7802 of this title.