U.S. slaps sanctions on eight N. Korean banks

The Trump administration has slapped new sanctions on eight North Korean banks and 26 bank workers living abroad.

The move diplomatically takes the pressure on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a notch higher to disband its nuclear programme.

"This further advances our strategy to fully isolate North Korea in order to achieve our broader objectives of a peaceful and denuclearised Korean peninsula. We are targetting North Korean banks and financial facilitators acting as representatives for North Korean banks across the globe," the CNN reported, quoting Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The new sanctions target North Koreans working as representatives of their banks in China, Russia, Libya and the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.).

The U.S. targetted North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank and the Central Bank of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as the North Korean government agencies, said the reports.

The sanctions are part of Trump administration's endeavours to showcase its commitment to putting an economic pressure and diplomacy to use to resolve the North Korea nuclear crisis.