미국 대북제재법의최근 동향 및 전망

After North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, it has appeared that international sanctions,including the United Nations (UN), against North Korea have strengthened. Especially, in the U.S Congress, enactment of the North Korea Sanctions and PolicyEnhancement Act of 2016, which for the first time was meant to exclusively targetNorth Korea, was a representative one. Indeed, there have been attentions on an issueof what will be a position Trump administration would take, as entering a phase ofsteps toward the denuclearization. Given a point that U.S. sanctions regime isgrounded in the legislations enacted by the Congress, however, this paper would liketo raise a necessity of understanding a stance of the Congress on North Koreasanctions, which has been somewhat inactively dealt with, by contemplatinglegislative flows within the enacted legislations and bills that have been issued inrecent years. As looking into the part, it is found that not only North Korea’sdenuclearization but a promotion of human rights situations have been furtheremphasized as a requirement of sanction relief or its termination. In addition, thereappears a trend of which an extent of the Congress’s engagement appears to haveexpanded to regulating the reporting obligations by the Administration before it. Also,it is found that in order to prevent North Korea’s sanction evasions an extent towhich financial sanctions may be applicable and level of imposition of the sanctionsagainst North Korea’s enablers have consolidated and that a bipartisan consensus onNorth Korea sanctions-related issues appears to have been formed, not solely in termsof North Korea policy-perspective but also in light of the aspect of ‘value’, so called‘human rights and democracy’ expressed in the U.S. foreign policy, for it isintertwined with the foreign policy in adversaries, Asia as well as Indo-Pacific region. Therefore, in the process of promoting unification policy, the government ofthe Republic of Korea needs to pay more attention and research on the legislativestream arisen in the U.S. Congress, in which the foreign policies are determined atlegislative level, rather than to solely put a focus on the moves in the U.S. administration.