The US slapped sanctions on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister Thursday, in its latest move to ratchet up pressure on the regime over its rampant human rights violations.

Kim Yo-jong, a vice director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s propaganda and agitation department, was among seven entities and two individuals to make it on the blacklist of the US State Department and Treasury. They are now subject to travel bans and an asset freeze. 

Seoul welcomed the action, saying it shores up the allies’ efforts to bring about a change in the rights conditions in the North through an awareness-raising campaign and an influx of outside information. 

“We believe the announcement, which was made just days before President Barack Obama’s term ends, reflects the administration’s resolve to hike sanctions and pressure against North Korea to the utmost limit and hand over the baton to its successor,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Cho June-hyuck said at a news briefing. 

Last July, Washington sanctioned the North’s young ruler over rights, along with 14 top government and party officials and eight institutions, as it unveiled its first report on the communist state’s human rights abuses and censorship in line with a law that took effect in February. 

In the latest and second paper, the State Department said human rights abuses in the North remain “among the worst in the world.” The blacklisted persons and organizations are responsible for such appalling actions as extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and detention, forced labor and torture, it noted.

“With these efforts, we are sending a signal to all DPRK (North Korea) government officials, particularly prison camp officials, interrogators and border guards, that we can and will expose human rights abuses and censorship,” deputy department spokesperson Mark Toner said in a statement. 

Among the newly designated are Kim Won-hong, minister of state security; Choe Hwi, another vice director of the propaganda and agitation department; Min Byong-chol, director of the organization and guidance department’s inspection division; Jo Yong-won, vice director of the organization and guidance department; and Kang Pil-hoon, director of the State Security Ministry’s general political bureau. The two agencies are the State Planning Commission and the Ministry of Labor.

The State Security Ministry engages in torture and the inhumane treatment of detainees during interrogation and in the country’s network of political prison camps, which are believed to have locked up as many as 120,000 North Koreans, according to the Treasury. 

Nicknamed the “angel of death,” Min is notorious for his record of political inspections and purges, with his agency in charge of censorship and idolization policies alongside the propaganda and agitation department. 

Jo has gained traction as he was repeatedly spotted accompanying Kim Jong-un during his field inspections and other outings 47 times last year, seven more than Hwang Pyong-so, director of the powerful General Political Bureau of the Korean People’s Army. 

Meanwhile, the announcement attested to the mystery surrounding the age of Kim Yo-jong as the Treasury stipulated her birth year as 1989, whereas the South Korean Unification Ministry’s official record states that there are views that she was born in 1987 or 1988. 

“There is a view that she was born in 1987, but we can’t make it official,” a ministry official told reporters on customary condition of anonymity, citing a lack of more reliable information. “The US would have its own information, as our Foreign Ministry and others do, so further work is needed to verify it.”

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)