Wall Street Journal
JOSHUA STANTON & SUNG-YOON LEE
In December 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama blamed North Korea for the cyberattack against Sony Pictures Entertainment over a film satirizing dictator Kim Jong Un, and for the cyberterrorist threats that drove the film from movie theaters across the U.S. Never before had a foreign state effectively used a terrorist threat to extend its censorship to the American public. The attack also led to the cancellation of a second film project about North Korea.
The directors of the U.S. National Security Agency and the FBI have both expressed “very high confidence” that North Korea carried out the attack. According to FBI Director James Comey, the NSA traced the hackers to Internet addresses used exclusively by the North Koreans. Other FBI sources revealed that the hackers exposed themselves by logging into both their Facebook account and Sony’s servers from North Korean Internet addresses.
The implications for freedom of expression are clear. “We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States,” President Obama said. NSA Director Michael Rogers observed, “[T]he entire world is watching how we as a nation are going to respond to this.”
Mr. Obama promised a “proportional” response, but a year later he has failed to follow through. That leaves America’s cybersecurity and fundamental freedoms vulnerable.
One year ago, Mr. Obama signed a broad executive order authorizing the U.S. Treasury Department to freeze of any assets of North Korea’s government, ruling party, officials and third-country enablers. But the order applies only to persons and entities designated by the administration. A year later, the administration has designated just 18 targets under this order, mostly low-level arms dealers and entities whose assets were already frozen.
The administration has yet to freeze the assets of Kim Jong Un or any of his top deputies, who are believed to have billions of dollars in European and Chinese banks. Nor has it frozen the assets of the North Korean-owned Chilbosan Hotel in downtown Shenyang, China, from which hackers carried out cyberattacks for years.
The U.S. State Department has ignored bipartisan calls from Congress to designate North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. It refuses to acknowledge multiple U.S. federal-court decisions finding that North Korea has sponsored acts of international terrorism, including the kidnapping of a U.S. permanent resident who is believed to have died in North Korean custody. It ignored Pyongyang’s multiple arms shipments to terrorists and its dispatch of clandestine agents to assassinate human-rights activists and dissidents abroad.
Mr. Obama has called North Korea “the most isolated, the most sanctioned, the most cut-off nation on Earth.” But in fact his administration’s sanctions against North Korea are comparatively weak.
The U.S. has fined enablers of censorship in Syria, Iran and Sudan; frozen the assets of Russian officials and financiers for aggression against a neighboring country; and sanctioned human-rights violators in Burundi. The administration has taken none of these actions against North Korea, even after a United Nations Commission of Inquiry in February 2014 condemned Pyongyang for its brutal concentration camps, and for murder, enslavement, mass starvation and rape.
The Treasury Department has frozen the assets of nearly all top leaders in Belarus and Zimbabwe for undermining democratic processes or institutions, and the assets of nearly 1,000 entities under Iran sanctions programs, compared to barely 100 in North Korea’s case.
North Korea is one of the world’s most notorious money launderers and is the only state known to counterfeit U.S. currency. Yet the Treasury Department hasn’t designated North Korea as a “primary money laundering concern”—a label that could cut off Pyongyang’s access to the international financial system. The U.S. has used this designation to pressure both Iran and Burma.
The administration’s failure to cut off Pyongyang’s access to hard currency is puzzling because this strategy has a proven track record. In 2005, the Bush administration began to sanction foreign banks that helped North Korea launder its money. In less than two years, the strategy forced Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table and promise to disarm. Unfortunately, the Bush administration relaxed its sanctions too soon, and Kim Jong Il, the current dictator’s father, reneged on his promises.
Today the Obama administration shrinks from the challenge of Kim Jong Un’s cyberterrorism, aggression, crimes against humanity and proliferation. That only emboldens North Korea, which may be preparing for a fourth nuclear test.
North Korea’s behavior compels the U.S. to return to a strategy of effective financial pressure. The U.S. can begin by passing the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, a bipartisan bill that will close gaps in the enforcement of sanctions against the Kim regime, and freeze the assets Mr. Kim uses to engage in nuclear proliferation, terrorism and crimes against humanity.
By overlooking Pyongyang’s threats, the administration may create the illusion of de-escalation. But in the long term that invites greater threats to U.S. freedom and security, as caving to blackmail only begets more blackmail. A soft line is unlikely to deter Pyongyang from striking again, and the regime’s disregard for human life is not limited by its borders.
Pyongyang’s proliferation threats have yet to reach the U.S. homeland, but its censorship already has. What comes next depends on what actions the U.S. takes.
