§9201 Findings; Purposes

Summary

Congress finds that the Government of North Korea is a serious threat. It has broken promises to give up nuclear weapons and ignored United Nations orders to stop making, testing, and producing weapons of mass destruction. North Korea has shared nuclear and missile technology, done illegal things like banned arms sales, drug trafficking, counterfeiting U.S. currency, major cyberattacks, and stealing U.S. intellectual property. It withdrew from the Korean War armistice signed July 27, 1953, and carried out attacks such as sinking the Cheonan (March 26, 2010), shelling Yeonpyeong Island (November 23, 2010), the DarkSeoul cyberattacks (March 20, 2013), and planting land mines (August 4, 2015). The country operates political prison camps holding up to 200,000 men, women, and children in brutal conditions. The regime has put weapons and luxury goods ahead of its people and ignored UN Security Council Resolutions 1695 (2006), 1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), 2087 (2013), and 2094 (2013). People and banks that deal with North Korea without strong safeguards help its abusive and illegal actions. North Korea has also sponsored terrorism, including assassination attempts and sending weapons to terrorists, and carried out destructive cyberattacks against U.S. persons and companies. The law’s goals are to respond with nonmilitary tools, to gain diplomatic leverage to change North Korea’s behavior, to reduce the suffering of the North Korean people, and to reaffirm earlier stated U.S. purposes.