Washington: The US has announced sanctions against North Korean government agencies and senior officials — among them leader Kim Jong-Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong — in response to Pyongyang’s human rights abuses and censorship activities.

The latest action, which sees seven individuals added to the growing list of sanctioned North Koreans, targets security and prison officials.

Those blacklisted include Kim Won Hong, who heads the ministry of state security.

“The MSS engages in torture and inhumane treatment of detainees during interrogation and in the country’s network of political prison camps,” the US Department of the Treasury on Wednesday said in a statement.

“This inhumane treatment includes beatings, forced starvation, sexual assault, forced abortions, and infanticide.”

The Treasury announcement came as the US State Department released a report on rights abuses in North Korea, which it said were among the worst in the world.

“The North Korean government continues to commit extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and detention, forced labor, and torture,” the State Department said.