SEOUL — North Korea on Friday severed diplomatic ties with Malaysia after that nation’s highest court docket agreed to extradite a North Korean man accused of cash laundering to the United States, a main coup in Washington’s efforts to choke Pyongyang’s illicit commerce.
In a ruling final week, Malaysia’s federal court docket accredited the extradition of a North Korean citizen, Mun Chol-myong, rejecting his argument that the case towards him was politically motivated and that he was caught in the cross hairs of diplomatic enmity between North Korea and Washington.
Washington has sought to deliver Mr. Mun to the United States to face legal expenses that he laundered cash by means of entrance corporations and violated worldwide sanctions by serving to to ship prohibited luxurious items from Singapore to North Korea on behalf of the regime in Pyongyang. Mr. Mun was arrested in 2019 in Malaysia, the place he had moved from Singapore in 2008.
Mr. Mun can be the first North Korean extradited to the United States to face a legal trial. His extradition is a part of Washington’s efforts to crack down on what it has described as widespread sanctions-evading activities by North Korean businessmen and diplomats. Over the years, the United Nations Security Council has imposed a sequence of more and more stringent sanctions on North Korea, searching for to strangle the nation’s entry to international forex, which it has used to assist finance its nuclear and ballistic-missile packages.
On Friday, North Korea recognized the United States as “the backstage manipulator and main culprit” behind Mr. Mun’s extradition, warning that Washington could have to “pay a due price.” It didn’t elaborate, however its announcement got here a day after North Korea stated it might not reply to any try by the new Biden administration to set up a channel of communication that might be used to negotiate an finish to Pyongyang’s rising nuclear weapons program.
Negotiations fell aside after conferences between the North Korean chief, Kim Jong-un, and former President Donald J. Trump ended abruptly in 2019.
“It is a nefarious act and unpardonably heavy crime,” North Korea’s Foreign Ministry stated in a assertion carried by its official Korean Central News Agency on Friday, accusing Malaysia of providing Mr. Mun “as a sacrifice of the U.S. hostile policy.” The “total severance of the diplomatic relations with Malaysia” would go into impact instantly.
Relations between North Korea and Malaysia had been already frosty after Mr. Kim’s estranged half brother, Kim Jong-nam, was assassinated at a Kuala Lumpur airport in February 2017. Two ladies employed by brokers from Pyongyang smeared his face with the internationally banned VX nerve agent. North Korea denied involvement.
After the incident, the two nations expelled ambassadors from their capitals.
North Korea’s severance of ties with Malaysia will deepen its diplomatic isolation. After the North carried out its sixth and final nuclear take a look at in 2017, in defiance of United Nations resolutions, a number of nations, together with Mexico, Spain and Kuwait, expelled North Korean ambassadors.
North Korean diplomats have additionally abandoned their abroad postings lately.
Thae Yong-ho, a minister in the North Korean Embassy in London, defected to Seoul in 2016 together with his spouse and two sons. Jo Song-gil, a senior North Korean diplomat who disappeared from Italy in late 2018, additionally ended up in Seoul, in accordance to South Korean lawmakers briefed on the matter. Ryu Kyeon-woo, a senior North Korean diplomat who fled his posting in Kuwait in 2019, has turned up in South Korea, too.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III met with their South Korean counterparts in Seoul on Thursday. Afterward, the two allies stated they might coordinate their approaches towards North Korea as the Biden administration finalizes its coverage overview in the subsequent few weeks. Washington stated it has tried to set up a diplomatic channel since final month, however that North Korea has not responded.
Choe Son-hui, first vice international minister of North Korea, stated on Thursday that North Korea felt no want to reply to “the U.S. delaying-time trick,” and that dialogue would solely be doable after the United States ended its “hostile policy.”
During his listening to in Malaysia, Mr. Mun, who’s in his 50s, denied cash laundering or issuing fraudulent paperwork to assist illicit shipments to his residence nation. His lawyer known as him “a pawn caught in the rivalry between the U.S. and North Korea.”
