U.S. sanctions Kim Jong Un over human rights abuses

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been placed on the U.S. sanctions list for human rights abuses, the State Department announced Wednesday.

The State Department and Treasury spent years on an investigation into North Korea, and said the government "continues to commit serious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detention, forced labor, and torture." Beyond Kim, 22 other individuals and entities are named, including the director of the Organization and Guidance Department, which enforces ideological discipline, and officials from the Reconnaissance General Bureau, which tracks down defectors after they leave North Korea.

While the sanctions are mostly symbolic, companies would be prohibited from doing business with Kim or any companies he controls and assets he owns in the U.S. would be frozen, international trade attorney Thad McBride told USA Today. Other heads of state previously sanctioned by the U.S. include Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, and Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

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