The US has sanctioned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the first time, citing "notorious abuses of human rights", in a move diplomats say will infuriate the nuclear-armed country.
The sanctions, the first to target any North Koreans for rights abuses, affect property and other assets within the US jurisdiction.
They include 10 other individuals besides Kim and five government ministries and departments, the US Treasury Department said in a statement.
"Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea continues to inflict intolerable cruelty and hardship on millions of its own people, including extrajudicial killings, forced labour, and torture," acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Adam J. Szubin said in the statement.
But inside North Korea, adulation for Kim, 32, is mandatory and he is considered infallible. A 2014 report by the United Nations, which referred to Kim by name in connection to human rights, triggered a strong reaction from Pyongyang, including a string of military provocations.
Earlier this year, the US Congress passed a new law requiring President Barack Obama to deliver a report within 120 days to congress on human rights in North Korea. It had designated sanctions for anyone found responsible for human rights violations.
Kim Jong Un, the third generation of his family to rule the Stalinist state, topped the list.
The US Treasury Department identified Kim's date of birth as January 8, 1984, a rare official confirmation of the young leader's birthday.
Many of the abuses are in North Korea's prison camps, which hold between 80,000 and 120,000 people including children, the report said.
The five agencies designated were two ministries that run North Korea's secret police and their correctional services, which operate the prison camps. Also named were the ruling Workers' Party's Organisation and Guidance Department (OGD), a key bureau used by Kim to wield control of the party and the government.
The sanctions also named lower-level officials, such as Minister of People's Security Choe Pu Il, as directly responsible for abuses.
Senior US administration officials said the new sanctions showed the administration's greater focus on human rights in North Korea, an area long secondary to Washington's efforts to halt Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.
The report was "the most comprehensive" to date on individual North Korean officials' roles in forced labour and repression.
They said the sanctions would be partly "symbolic" but hoped that naming mid-level officials may make functionaries "think twice" before engaging in abuses. "It lifts the anonymity," a senior administration official told reporters.
The North Korea mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.
South Korea, which cut off all political and commercial ties with its own sanctions against the North in February, welcomed the move, saying it will encourage greater international pressure on the North to improve its human rights record.
China's foreign ministry, asked about the new sanctions, reiterated its policy of opposing unilateral sanctions.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, visiting Beijing on Thursday, said he is very concerned about rising tension on the Korean peninsula and called on North Korea to refrain from making any provocations.
The new sanctions follow a long list of measures that have had little effect in pressuring North Korean leaders to change, experts who study the North's political system said.
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