California Sen. Feinstein Urges North Korea Sanctions After Super Bowl Satellite Overflight
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- Just days after a newly-launched North Korean satellite passed almost directly over Levi's Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) took to the Senate floor to express her support for enforcement of North Korea sanctions.
Feinstein said Wednesday that the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act of 2016 would impose mandatory sanctions against North Korean persons and entities involved in weapons of mass destruction development, delivery and proliferation, serious human rights abuses, trade in luxury goods, money laundering, smuggling, and narcotics trafficking.
The Senate passed the bill on Wednesday with the House of Representatives following suit Friday. It now heads to the president for approval.
"To me, there is no question that Mr. Kim (Jong-un)'s intentions are adverse to the well-being of the United States," Feinstein said. "As a citizen of the western United States, and a Senator representing nearly 40 million people in California, this is all very alarming to me and it should alarm the world. If you take stock of North Korea's recent actions and their capabilities, the cause for concern is apparent."
Feinstein said it's clear that Kim Jong-un seeks a nuclear arsenal and that measures adopted so far by the international community have been insufficient to stop him.
According to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which monitors all satellites in orbit, North Korea now has two satellites circling the Earth.
On Feb. 6, the Saturday before the Super Bowl, NORAD said a North Korean missile was launched that day into space but was determined not to be a threat to North America.
In San Francisco Friday, several Korean organizations -- including the San Francisco Korean-American Seniors' Association and the Federation of Korean Associations -- organized a protest outside the Chinese Consulate in response to North Korea's long-range missile launch to condemn China's support of North Korea.
A joint statement, released on behalf of various Korean organizations in Northern California, claimed North Korea's action last week "ignores efforts towards peaceful reunification, which is the desire of the whole of the Korean people, and it is a reckless provocation that threatens the Korean Peninsula and world peace.
Protesters also urged China to stop protecting the Kim Jong-Un regime.
Feinstein agreed that China continues to provide fuel, food, trade and international protection which sustains Kim Jong-un's government.
On the Senate floor, Feinstein went on to say that the North Korean regime routinely conducts torture and is responisible for forced disappearances and inhumane detention conditions.
The 2015 United Nations Human Rights report states that North Korea's leaders should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, Feinstein said.
The senator recounted an anecdote from the UN report, in which a UN investigator was told of a woman with a dead toddler strapped to her back while on a train in North Korea.
State security interrogated the woman and then noticed that the dead child's stomach was red. As the woman broke down and cried, the state security opened the child's stomach and found about two kilograms of copper inside.
"To survive, this woman was forced to smuggle copper in her own dead child's stomach. No mother anywhere on earth should be forced to such extremes," Feinstein said.
By Hannah Albarazi - Follow her on Twitter