Britain backs kicking N Korean workers out of EU

Foreign minister Boris Johnson told AFP there was a "wide measure of agreement" among his EU counterparts to forge ahead with new measures against Kim Jong-Un's regime after it carried out its sixth nuclear test on Sunday, its most powerful to date.

Washington is pushing for a UN Security Council vote on a resolution calling for tough new measures on the North, including an oil embargo, an asset freeze on Kim and an end to payments of North Korean guest workers. Johnson said talks with his EU counterparts in Tallinn on Thursday had produced a "very very wide measure of agreement" on the need to do more to pile pressure on Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear programme.

"In a lot of EU countries there are a lot of DPRK workers who are sending remittances back to North Korea," Johnson said.

The North's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "There are sanctions you can impose, you can send them back and there's a wide measure of support for that," Johnson told AFP during a visit to British troops on a NATO base in northern Estonia. When asked, Johnson confirmed he supported sending North Korean workers home from the EU.

Overseas workers, most of them posted in China and Russia, are a key source of revenue for Pyongyang. European diplomats say there are around 300 North Korean workers in the bloc, most of them in Poland