Trump Prolongs Sanctions on North Korea for One More Year Despite Thaw With Kim

US President Donald Trump has decided to prolong sanctions introduced in the wake of North Korea's missile and nuclear tests following a punitive December 2017 UN resolution restricting Pyongyang’s fuel imports and other trade. The day before, however, the US president had stressed that Kim Jong Un was complying with international demands.

The White House announced that US President Donald Trump has decided to prolong anti-North Korea sanctions for one more year as part of his "maximum pressure" policy toward the country.

In his earlier statement, Trump did not exclude the lifting of sanctions if the DPRK refused to use nuclear weapons, but the official policy of the United States is that sanctions will only be halted after "full, verifiable and irreversible" denuclearization.

The move took place only a day after the US president announced, during a rally in Minnesota, that Pyongyang was following a path of denuclearization and had "stopped everything we wanted them to stop," adding that he and Kim Jong-un had "great chemistry" during the summit in Singapore on June 12.

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The meeting Trump mentioned included the signing of a historical agreement that required Pyongyang to denuclearize in exchange for a freeze on US-South Korean military drills and eventually the lifting of sanctions.

The US Sanctions

The United States introduced several rounds of sanctions to prevent the country from further developing nuclear arms. The punitive measures followed a UN resolution, adopted on December 22, 2017, and aimed to strengthen the restrictive measures against Pyongyang, binding fuel imports and other trade, as well as prohibiting North Koreans from working abroad.

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