North Korea Sanctions Regulations

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY <SUBAGY>Office of Foreign Assets Control</SUBAGY> <CFR>31 CFR Part 510</CFR> <SUBJECT>North Korea Sanctions Regulations</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Foreign Assets Control, Treasury. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is amending the North Korea Sanctions Regulations to modify a general license that authorizes certain transactions in support of specified humanitarian activities of nongovernmental organizations. Additionally, OFAC is adding general licenses to authorize the following: transactions related to the exportation and reexportation of items authorized by the U.S. Department of Commerce; the provision of certain agricultural commodities, medicine, and medical devices; and certain journalistic activities in North Korea. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective February 16, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> OFAC: Assistant Director for Licensing, tel.: 202-622-2480; Assistant Director for Regulatory Affairs, tel.: 202-622-4855; or Assistant Director for Compliance, tel.: 202-622-2490. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Electronic Availability</HD> This document and additional information concerning OFAC are available on OFAC's website: <E T="03">www.treas.gov/ofac.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On November 4, 2010, OFAC issued the North Korea Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR part 510 (75 FR 67912, November 4, 2010) (the “Regulations”). Since then, OFAC has amended the Regulations several times. OFAC is now amending the general license at § 510.512 of the Regulations, which authorizes certain transactions in support of specified humanitarian activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in North Korea, to broaden the activities and transactions authorized, including transactions with certain Government of North Korea entities that are necessary for the provision of services authorized by § 510.512, and make other changes. As a condition of the general license, NGOs relying on the authorization must submit a report to the U.S. Department of State no fewer than 30 days before the commencement of their activity indicating that the NGO's activities have been approved by or notified to the Security Council Committee established pursuant to United Nations Security Council resolution 1718 (2006), or that the NGO's activities do not require such an approval or notification. The U.S. Department of State may notify NGOs within the two-week period following submission of the report to inform them that their activities are not authorized by the NGO general license. Additionally, this rule adds three new general licenses to the Regulations. Section 510.520 authorizes transactions incident to the exportation or reexportation to North Korea of items (commodities, software, or technology) subject to the Export Administration Regulations, 15 CFR parts 730 through 774 (EAR), that have been licensed or otherwise authorized by the U.S. Department of Commerce under the EAR, including on a “No License Required” (NLR) basis due to the availability of an EAR license exception. Section 510.521 authorizes the provision of certain agricultural commodities, medicine, and medical devices (excluding “luxury goods” as described in 15 CFR 746.4(b)(1)) that are not subject to the EAR to North Korea. Section 510.522 authorizes U.S. news reporting organizations and their employees to engage in certain journalistic activities in North Korea, which OFAC authorizes via specific license. Finally, this rule corrects a typographic error in the authority citation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Public Participation</HD> Because this amendment of the Regulations involves a foreign affairs function, the provisions of Executive Order 12866 of September 30, 1993, “Regulatory Planning and Review” (58 FR 51735, October 4, 1993), as amended, and the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. 553) requiring notice of proposed rulemaking, opportunity for public participation, and delay in effective date are inapplicable. Because no notice of proposed rulemaking is required for this rule, the Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 U.S.C. 601-612) does not apply. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Paperwork Reduction Act</HD> The collections of information related to the Regulations are contained in 31 CFR part 501 (the “Reporting, Procedures and Penalties Regulations”). Pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3507), those collections of information have been approved by the Office of Management and Budget under control number 1505-0164. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless the collection of information displays a valid control number. <LSTSUB> <HD SOURCE="HED">List of Subjects in 31 CFR Part 510</HD> Administrative practice and procedure, Agricultural commodities, Aircraft, Banks, Banking, Blocking of assets, CAPTA List, Diplomatic missions, Foreign financial institutions, Foreign trade, Imports, Journalistic activities, Medical devices, Medicine, Nongovernmental organizations, North Korea, Patents, Secondary sanctions, Services, Telecommunications, United Nations, Vessels, Workers' Party of Korea. </LSTSUB> For the reasons set forth in the preamble, OFAC amends 31 CFR part 510 as follows: <HD SOURCE="HED">PART 510—NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS REGULATIONS </HD> <REGTEXT TITLE="31" PART="510"> 1. The authority citation is revised to read as follows: <HD SOURCE="HED">Authority: </HD> 3 U.S.C. 301; 31 U.S.C. 321(b); 50 U.S.C. 1601-1651, 1701-1706; 22 U.S.C. 287c, 9201-9255; Pub. L. 101-410, 104 Stat. 890, as amended (28 U.S.C. 2461 note); Pub. L. 115-44, 131 Stat. 886 (codified in scattered sections of 22 U.S.C.); E.O. 13466, 73 FR 36787, 3 CFR, 2008 Comp., p. 195; E.O. 13551, 75 FR 53837, 3 CFR, 2010 Comp., p. 242; E.O. 13570, 76 FR 22291, 3 CFR, 2011 Comp., p. 233; E.O. 13687, 80 FR 819, 3 CFR, 2015 Comp., p. 259; E.O. 13722, 81 FR 14943, 3 CFR, 2016 Comp., p. 446; E.O. 13810, 82 FR 44705, 3 CFR, 2017 Comp., p. 379. </REGTEXT> <SUBPART> <HD SOURCE="HED">Subpart E—Licenses, Authorizations, and Statements of Licensing Policy</HD> </SUBPART> <REGTEXT TITLE="31" PART="510"> 2. Revise § 510.512 to read as follows: <SECTION> <SECTNO>§ 510.512 </SECTNO> <SUBJECT>Certain transactions in support of nongovernmental organizations' activities.</SUBJECT> (a) Except as provided in paragraph (d) of this section, and subject to the reporting requirements set forth in paragraph (e) of this section, all transactions, including the payment of reasonable and customary taxes, fees, and import duties to, and purchase or receipt of permits, licenses, or public utility services from, the Government of North Korea that are ordinarily incident and necessary to the activities described in paragraph (b) of this section by a nongovernmental organization (NGO) are authorized, provided that the NGO is not a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this part. <NOTE> <HD SOURCE="HED">Note 1 to paragraph (a).</HD> The authorization in paragraph (a) of this section includes the exportation or reexportation of items (commodities, software, or technology) not subject to the Export Administration Regulations (15 CFR parts 730 through 774) (EAR) that are ordinarily incident and necessary to activities described in paragraph (b) of this section, except for items described in paragraph (d)(3) of this section. Pursuant to 15 CFR 746.4(a), a license from the Department of Commerce is required to export or reexport any item subject to the EAR to North Korea, except food and medicine designated as EAR99, unless a license exception applies. </NOTE> (b) The activities referenced in paragraph (a) of this section are non-commercial activities designed to directly benefit the civilian population that fall into one of the following categories: (1) Activities to support humanitarian projects to meet basic human needs, including disaster, drought, or flood relief; food, nutrition, or medicine distribution; the provision of health services; assistance for vulnerable or displaced populations, including individuals with disabilities and the elderly; and environmental programs; (2) Activities to support democracy building, including activities to support rule of law, citizen participation, government accountability and transparency, human rights and fundamental freedoms, access to information, and civil society development projects; (3) Activities to support education at or below a secondary school level, including combating illiteracy, increasing access to education at the primary or secondary school level, and assisting education reform projects, provided that such education excludes the subjects of math, sciences, technology, engineering, and computer programming; (4) Activities to support non-commercial development projects directly benefiting civilians, including those related to health, food security, and water and sanitation; (5) Activities to support environmental and natural resource protection, including the preservation and protection of threatened or endangered species, responsible and transparent management of natural resources, and the remediation of pollution or other environmental damage; and (6) Activities to support disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs and peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and conflict resolution programs. (c) U.S. depository institutions, U.S.-registered brokers or dealers in securities, and U.S.-registered money transmitters are authorized to process transfers of funds on behalf of U.S. or third-country NGOs, including transfers of funds to or from North ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━