Sanctions may end it for N Korea

A HIGH-ranking former member of the North Korean government says the harsh economic sanctions imposed on the country could be enough to wipe it out within 12 months.

Ri Jong-ho, a former economic official appointed by Kim Jong-un’s father and predecessor, Kim Jong-il, says the United Nationsimposed trade restrictions are so strong they could cripple the isolated nation.

“I don’t know North Korea will survive a year with these sanctions,” he said. “Many people will die.” Mr Ri said the sanctions put in place this year were on a “totally different level” as a result of China closing all North Korean businesses in the country, banning exports of petroleum products and cutting off textile imports.

“It has blocked the market going in and out. Tens of hundreds of companies have been suspended,” he said.

Mr Ri said all economic activity in North Korea had stopped.

“There is no electricity, yet they are spending their money on military arms,” he said.

“All of the factories that require steel have stopped, so it is like a domino. There is hardly power generation so how can the factories run?

“When you look at the aerial view of the Korean peninsula, it is pitch black in North Korea.”

Mr Ri – a former official with Office 39, a secretive trading organisation under direct control of the Kim family – defected from the hermit kingdom in 2014.

He fled to South Korea, then the US, as Kim Jong-un was executing hundreds of high-level officials, many of whom had been loyal to Kim Jong-il, like himself.

In New York this week, Mr Ri told the Asia Society, Kim Jong-un’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests were all about protecting his regime and stopping a South Korean invasion.

“The North Koreans always think the South Koreans are their biggest enemy and they are always feeling threatened,” he said.

Mr Ri does not believe Mr Kim is serious about using his weapons against the US – instead they are being developed more as a political tool.

“It developed nuclear power not to confront the US but to make their power greater than South Korea’s. Not to attack the US – it’s too big,” he said.