Seoul unveils sanctions in opposition to 4 people and 5 entities following newest missile launches.

South Korea has introduced new sanctions concentrating on North Korea’s weapons programmes following Pyongyang’s newest missile launches.

The measures goal 4 people and 5 entities, together with a South African nationwide and two Singaporean delivery companies, linked to North Korea’s improvement of nuclear weapons and missiles, South Korea’s overseas ministry mentioned on Monday.

The announcement got here after North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles from its east coast, two days after it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

South Korea and the US on Sunday staged joint air drills involving B-1B bombers in response to Pyongyang’s ICBM launch.

South Korea, the US and the United Nations condemned North Korea’s newest missile launches as unlawful provocations.

“The instant materials results could also be restricted however South Korea’s up to date sanctions are a part of a development that’s greater than symbolic,” Leif-Eric Easley, an affiliate professor of worldwide research at Ewha Womans College in Seoul, advised Al Jazeera.

“The present authorities in Seoul doesn’t draw back from strengthening protection capabilities and monetary accountability measures. This reciprocity coverage goals to dissuade future North Korean threats by steadily imposing prices on Pyongyang for every provocation.”

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s administration earlier this month sanctioned 4 North Korean people and 7 entities over cyberattacks believed to be linked to the nation’s weapons programmes, in Seoul’s first such measures concentrating on Pyongyang’s hacking actions.

In December, Seoul joined the US and Japan in asserting sanctions over Pyongyang’s repeated missile assessments, figuring out eight people and 7 establishments it mentioned had been related with North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons improvement programme.

Nevertheless, Andrei Lankov, a North Korea scholar and professor at Kookmin College in Seoul, mentioned sanctions are unlikely to halt North Korea’s improvement of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

“North Koreans are decided to develop ICBMs able to hitting the US, partially as a deterrent, partially as a method to blackmail the US from blackmailing South Korea if and when the North Koreans determine it’s time to assault North Korea,” Lankov advised Al Jazeera.

“If you happen to ask me what may be accomplished, my quick reply is nothing,” Lankov added.

South Korea and North Korea have a tense relationship stemming from the division of the Korean Peninsula into the communist North and capitalist, pro-US South within the aftermath of World Struggle II.

The 2 Koreas fought a bloody battle from 1950-1953 that resulted in an armistice that left the 2 sides technically in a state of battle to at the present time.