North Korea has demanded the United Nations take \u201curgent measures\u201d to help return a cargo ship taken by the United States, calling the seizure a \u201cheinous\u201d act.<\/p>\n
Washington announced last week it had taken possession of the North Korean-registered bulk carrier M\/V Wise Honest \u2013 a year after it was detained in Indonesia \u2013 citing sanctions-violating activities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis act of dispossession has clearly indicated that the United States is indeed a gangster country that does not care at all about international laws,\u201d the North Korean ambassador to the UN said in a letter sent to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres dated Friday, according to North Korea\u2019s KCNA news agency.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, Pyongyang had slammed the seizure as an \u201coutright denial\u201d of the spirit of a statement signed by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump at their first summit in Singapore last year.<\/p>\n
The US Justice Department said the North Korean cargo ship was seized and impounded to American Samoa. The vessel was accused of illicit coal shipments in violation of sanctions.<\/p>\n
The ship was first confiscated by other foreign maritime authorities in Indonesia in April 2018.<\/p>\n
The 17,000-tonne ship, which was also used to deliver heavy machinery to North Korea, is one of the country\u2019s largest bulk carriers, the Justice Department said.<\/p>\n
The case marks the first time the US has seized a North Korean cargo vessel for violating sanctions.<\/p>\n
The seizure came amid heightened tensions after Pyongyang conducted weapons drills involving short-range missiles in recent weeks, and with nuclear talks deadlocked since the collapse of the Hanoi summit between Trump and Kim earlier this year.<\/p>\n
With the denuclearization talks stalled, North Korea went ahead with more weapons tests this month. The tests were seen as a protest by Kim after Trump rejected his calls for sanctions relief at the Hanoi summit.<\/p>\n
North Korea is sanctioned under multiple UN Security Council resolutions for its nuclear and missile programs, and lifting of some of the measures was a key demand from Pyongyang at the second Trump-Kim summit in February that ultimately broke down without a deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korea has demanded the United Nations take \u201curgent measures\u201d to help return a cargo ship taken by the United States, calling the seizure a \u201cheinous\u201d act. Washington announced last week it had taken possession of the North Korean-registered bulk carrier M\/V Wise Honest \u2013 a year after it was detained in Indonesia \u2013 citing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2780],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbbJo6-3fu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ehsasnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ehsasnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ehsasnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ehsasnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ehsasnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ehsasnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ehsasnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ehsasnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ehsasnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ehsasnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}