The measures were in response to the continuing human rights abuses being carried out under dictator Kim Jong-un’s regime, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
Mr Mnuchin said: “Today’s sanctions target the North Korean military and regime officials engaged in flagrant abuses of human rights.
“We also are targeting North Korean financial facilitators who attempt to keep the regime afloat with foreign currency earned through forced labor operations.
“We are especially concerned with the North Korean military, which operates as secret police, punishing all forms of dissent.
“Further, the military operates outside of North Korea to hunt down asylum seekers, and brutally detains and forcibly returns North Korean citizens.”
North Korea routinely denies widespread allegations of rights abuses.
Among those targeted by the sanctions were the director and the deputy director of the Military Security Command, the first vice minister of the Ministry of People’s Security and the labor minister. The United States also sanctioned North Korea’s consul general in Shenyang, China, and a diplomat at North Korea’s embassy in Vietnam.
The Treasury statement charged that Ku Sung Sop, the consul general in Shenyang, and Kim Min Chol, a diplomat at the embassy in Vietnam, had participated in the forced repatriation of North Korean asylum seekers.
It said the Ch’olhyo’n Overseas Construction Company, which was sanctioned along with the Military Security Command and the External Construction Bureau, had operated in Algeria and was reported to earn foreign currency for North Korea.
“Employees of Ch’olhyo’n are kept in slave-like conditions, including having salaries and passports withheld by (North Korean) security officials assigned as site supervisors, meager food rations, poor living conditions, and severe restrictions on their freedom of movement,” the Treasury statement said.
It said the External Construction Bureau had operated in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
Washington has sought to restrict the income North Korea receives from its export of labour as part of efforts to choke off funds helping to finance the country’s nuclear and missile programs, which Pyongyang says are aimed at developing weapons capable of hitting the United States.