By all accounts, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2270 represents a significant and unexpected advance of the authority given to the UN and member states to pursue sanctions against the DPRK. Language referring to North Korean coal, iron ore, and jet fuel was unprecedented, and the demands for member state action were more insistent, in many cases moving from merely “calling upon” governments to act to requiring their implementation of UN mandates. While diplomats rightly hailed 2270 as unprecedented, experts and longtime watchers of North Korea reacted to the resolution with caution and, in some cases, skepticism. Every previous UNSC resolution imposing sanctions on the North could rightly be described as “the strongest resolution ever adopted,” but the language rarely translated into action on the ground. The UN Panel of Experts on North Korea has documented the ways in which many member states have either engaged in only the most perfunctory efforts to implement past resolutions or ignored their obligations entirely.¹

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