After UN tightens sanctions, Kim Jong-un tightens grip

The December 22 sanctions ban the supply of nearly 75 per cent of refined oil products to the North and caps crude oil deliveries at current levels. The fuel cut was supported by China, North Korea’s main ally, and is aimed at strangling Pyongyang’s military-industrial complex in the wake of its latest missile test on November 29 showing the ability to hit mainland United States. 

Purge pending?
Kim Jong-un, speaking a day after the new UN penalties, called for a fight to root out “non-socialist” elements in the society. Addressing the ruling Workers’ Party Conference of Cell Chairpersons on Saturday, he directed the rank-and-file organisations to lead a “revolutionary offensive to uproot non-socialist practice”, according to state-run news agency KCNA.
Cell chairpersons lead the ruling party’s lowest-level units, consisting of five to 30 members. Several rounds of sanctions have failed to halt North Korea’s progress towards full nuclear-armed status, with signs instead that its people are bearing the brunt of suffering. 
After the previous round of sanctions in October, UN rapporteur for human rights in North Korea warned that the country’s food shortage and gulag prison system for snuffing dissent could be exacerbated by sanctions. 
“I don’t want to see the UN putting the government of North Korea [in a position] to choose between nuclearisation and the economy,” Tomas Ojea Quintana said. 
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation reported in February that the North Korean people are already suffering a significant food shortage. It said North Korea needs to import 440,000 tonnes of food to keep its peo0ple fed this year. International donors have only provided a tiny fraction of that amount. Most South Korean donors have suspended their food and medical relief programmes to the North this year amid rising tensions.
North Korea’s state media have warned that sanctions may cause another “arduous march” – an expression that refers to the famine in the 1990s that is said to have killed over 3 million people.
The latest sanctions also order all North Koreans working abroad to be sent back by the end of 2019. 
In addition, they ban sales of all industrial machinery, trucks, iron, steel and other metals to the North and add 15 Pyongyang officials to the UN sanctions blacklist for global visa ban and assets freeze.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry estimates the penalty will cut 10 per cent, or US$250 million, of the North’s annual exports. 

$1.2 billion in imports cut
“On the import side, the North is expected to sustain a reduction of some $1.2 billion, or about 30 per cent of its annual imports,” said a ministry official.
The official expected a reduction of 90 per cent in the supply of petroleum. The expulsion of overseas workers would slash foreign currency revenues, another lifeline, by $200 million to $500 million a year. 
The ministry estimates that the suspension of overseas income plus export bans will amount to a total loss of between $450 million and $750 million annually.
On Sunday, Pyongyang responded by slamming the UN’s move as an “act of war”.
“If you think that those toothless ‘sanctions’ could stop the victorious march of our people who have... achieved the historic goal of building the national nuclear weapons, there would not be a bigger mistake than that,” the foreign ministry said.
“The US and its puppet followers should never forget the newly-upgraded status of our nation as a nation that could pose a real nuclear threat to the US mainland,” it added.
Analysts say the regime’s military is always the last to suffer from sanctions, whose impact is felt first and hardest by North Korea’s already deprived people. 
Amid the tightening international stranglehold and exchange of bellicose rhetoric by Kim and US leader Donald Trump, little is being said about the plight of more than 25 million people effectively being held hostage by the crisis.