The North Korean nuclear crisis has placed a premium on the ability of sanctions to avert war, and the past two years have seen an important increase in U.S. and international sanctions against Pyongyang. Since the beginning of 2016, the United Nations Security Council has enacted five new resolutions that rank among the toughest such penalties the UN has ever imposed on any country—targeting the North’s sources of income and trade, and not simply entities directly involved in its nuclear program. The U.S. Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration also enacted important new sanctions last year, including a welcome move to begin imposing sanctions on Chinese companies that engage in commercial trade with North Korea. Just last week, the Trump administration strengthened these measures by imposing sanctions on more than a dozen North Korean financial and procurement representatives based in China and by targeting two Chinese companies that engaged in commercial business with North Korea.
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