"Now North Korea has nothing to lose"

aljazeera.com

Last Monday the North Korean government told the world that we should ready ourselves for a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula. According to the official statement, North Korean armed forces "have a military operation plan of our style to liberate south Korea and strike the US mainland".

Usually, news editors love such statements from Pyongyang - they make for catchy headlines, after all - while North Korea watchers meet this bellicosity with indifference. Such statements are made a little too regularly.

In 2013, North Korean TV showed Kim Jong-Un in front a large map indicating targets for North Korean nuclear strikes; these included not only Washington and New York, but also, curiously, Austin, Texas.

This time, things might be more serious. Pyongyang may have no intention to start a nuclear war, but recent developments make a confrontation in Korea more likely than ever.

Game changer

The game changer is the UN Security Council Resolution 2270, which was passed on March 2 in response to a nuclear test North Korea conducted in January, followed by a missile launch in February. Resolution 2270 is much tougher than earlier resolutions and is, essentially, unprecedented.

Among other things, it bans North Korea from exporting such minerals as gold, titanium, and vanadium. It might even ban coal exports, though the wording is somewhat ambiguous. These minerals constitute well over half of North Korea's exports, with coal alone accounting for some 40 percent.

A ban on the sale of aviation fuel to North Korea is introduced, as well as harsh restrictions on North Korean shipping, financial operations and the like.

Additionally, the United States and South Korea introduced their own unilateral sanctions. Seoul closed the Kaesong Industrial Zone, a joint industrial project in which some 120 South Korean companies employed 50,000 North Korean workers.

Meanwhile, the US is going to sanction the third countries' banks and other companies which are engaged in transactions with North Korea. If fully implemented, such measures would completely exclude North Korea from the global finance system.