The U.S. has imposed sanctions on North Korea's border guards for violating the human rights of North Korean residents trying to flee the regime.
 
The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control on Friday newly sanctioned the North's State Security Border Guard General Bureau over its tight border controls, including land mines and shoot-on-sight orders that have resulted in the deaths of numerous North Koreans.
 
The department said that people inside the North are reportedly subject to forced labor, torture, and other human rights violations and abuses at the hands of the government and due to the dire circumstances, tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled the country in the past two decades.
 
But it said their journeys to leave are particularly treacherous due to attempts to thwart their escapes by state security agencies such as the border guard bureau.
 
The Treasury also placed sanctions on two individuals including North Korean national Kim Myong-chol, and seven foreign entities that provided financial assistance to a North Korean state-run animation studio.
 
Kim is a Paris-based employee of the studio which was already blacklisted by the U.S. last year for arranging overseas jobs for North Korean animation filmmakers to earn foreign currency for the state. 
 
The U.S. State Department said the designations partly aim to disrupt and deter the North Korean government's role in restricting freedom of movement, mistreating asylum seekers, and exploiting laborers to generate revenue for the state.
 
The treasury department said that North Korean nationals are often forced to work in foreign countries to generate currency that is utilized to support the regime's weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.

[Photo : YONHAP News]