Barack Obama has ratcheted up pressure on North Korea after a damaging cyber attack on Sony Pictures, imposing new sanctions on agencies and officials linked to its arms trading and intelligence establishment.
The US president on Friday authorised the Treasury to designate three entities and 10 individuals as agencies or officials controlled by the North Korean government, denying them access to the US financial system and barring them from doing business with the US in an attempt to increase financial pressure on the regime.
The decision to impose new sanctions came two weeks after the White House first publicly blamed North Korea for the Sony attack, as officials grappled with how to punish a regime that is already economically isolated and severely impoverished.