Annyeonghi Kyeseyo!

Foreign banks are waving goodbye to North Korea as they sever ties en masse with the rogue nation, a move supported by the U.S.

The United States has accused Pyongyang of spreading weapons and missile technology to other countries, counterfeiting U.S. currency and trafficking drugs. It wants to see the reclusive, communist-led regime financially incapacitated.

"There is sort of a voluntary coalition of financial institutions saying that they don't want to handle this business anymore and that is causing financial isolation for the government of North Korea," Stuart Levey, the Treasury Department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press.

"They don't want to be the banker for someone who's engaged in crime, as the North Korean government is," he said.

Banks in Singapore, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong and Mongolia are opting not to do business with North Korea, Levey said.

This will undoubtedly inflict some desrved discomfort on Pyongyang, but is the added pressure productive toward our ends?  Clearly it's a move toward further isolation of the country, something any rational head of state would seek to avoid.  But "rational" isn't among the first adjectives that spring to mind when considering Kim Jong Il's track record.  "Reclusive" and "unstable" seem more apt.

To the extent the financial cutoff curbs North Korea's ability to engage in counterfeiting, drug trafficking, and weapons sales, the move is unequivocally welcome.  But does the increased isolation also risk squeezing Kim into a tighter corner where he's more likely to lash out with whatever functional fireworks he's managed to stockpile?