World War 3: The EU now plotting to take down North Korea – and this is how

The EU announced a ban on oil and oil products exports to today as it tightened sanctions on the communist country over its nuclear and missile programs.

Foreign ministers also imposed a blanket ban on doing business with North Korea in sanctions that go beyond the latest UN measures. 

And North Koreans working in the EU will also be blocked from sending all their wages home to Pyongyang.

The move is the latest in a series of international efforts to rein in North Korea’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

Following North Korea’s most powerful nuclear test, the UN Security Council capped North Korean imports of crude oil, but China and Russia resisted an outright ban.

EU ministers cited “the persistent threat to international peace and stability” posed by Pyongyang.

As part of the measures, North Korean workers in the EU – estimated to be about 400, mainly in Poland – now face a lower limit on the amount for money they can send home and their work visas will not be renewed once they expire.

The sanctions add three more top North Korean officials and six businesses to a blacklist banning them from travel to the EU and freezing their assets.

This takes the total of those sanctioned by the EU to 41 individuals and 10 companies, a senior EU official said. 

UN sanctions target 63 people and 53 companies and institutions.

Earlier today, Boris Johnson backed other foreign ministers in a plan to impose fresh sanctions on North Korea in a bid to cripple the country’s expanding nuclear programme.

He said: “North Korea continues to pose an unacceptable threat to the international community, which is why the UK, working closely with our European allies, has secured a set of stringent new sanctions upon the regime.

“As I have said before, the North Korean regime must bear full responsibility for the measures that the international community is enacting against it, including these sanctions.

“Maximising diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea is the most effective way to pressure Pyongyang to halt its illegal and aggressive actions.”

Further countries are set to follow Britain in the plan to put an economic squeeze on Pyongyang.

Speaking ahead of the EU Foreign Affairs Council, Boris Johnson said it was time for the Chinese to “ratchet up pressure” on North Korea, and stop buying oil from the nation.

World efforts to diffuse the palpable nuclear tension imposed by North Korea come at a time Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump find themselves locked in a war of words.

Pyongyang has declared it is on the “brink of war” because of Trump as it sends another threat to the US President amid World War 3 fears.

North Korea accused Trump of being a “war merchant” for abusing the arms trade for “world domination”.