U.S. Slaps Sanctions on North Korea Over Use of Nerve Agent in Assassination<br />By RICK GLADSTONEMARCH 6, 2018<br />North Korea ordered the assassination last year of its leader’s estranged half brother with a banned nerve agent, an act<br />that has caused the United States to impose new sanctions on the country, the State Department said on Tuesday.<br />Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, was killed Feb. 13, 2017, with VX, a deadly nerve<br />agent used in prohibited chemical weapons of mass destruction that North Korea is known to have stockpiled.<br />The State Department announcement said that the United States had formally determined on Feb. 22<br />that North Korea was responsible and that the sanctions took effect on Monday.<br />Under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991, the finding added to existing American<br />sanctions "targeting unlawful North Korean activities," the department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, said in the statement.<br />The announcement by the State Department came on the same day<br />that South Korean officials said the North was willing to talk with the United States about ending the crisis over its missiles and nuclear arsenal.<br />Nauert said that The United States strongly condemns the use of chemical weapons to conduct an assassination,
