Sanctions – Page 3

April 3, 2018

How to build a big, beautiful (financial) wall around North Korea & make Kim Jong-un pay for it.

HERE IN WASHINGTON, THE BLOB IS ALL ATWITTER over a possible summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Those who see no solution to this crisis but the next piece of paper took the news with the same mixture of euphoria and dread as a man who waits four hours in the emergency room in throbbing agony, only to hear, “Doctor Oz will see you now.” But in reality, a Trump-Kim summit is no more than 40 percent likely to...

Money Laundering/Sanctions

March 5, 2018

Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s board, search & sink their smuggling ships & show it on TV.

LAST WEEK, REUTERS REPORTED THAT THE WHITE HOUSE is considering a proposal to board and search North Korean merchant ships for contraband on the high seas. This is one of the few forceful options against Pyongyang I could get behind. Unlike “bloody nose” proposals (which sound like they’re an urban myth anyway) and preemptive strike proposals (which exist, at least on the op-ed pages) the boarding of North Korean smuggling ships at sea is unlikely to trigger a sudden use-it-or-lose-it...

Arms Trafficking/Shipping sanctions

February 28, 2018

You want maximum pressure? Oh, I’ll show you maximum pressure.

SINCE LAST WEEK, WHEN THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT announced 56 designations of ships, shipping companies, and trading companies, reporters have been emailing me to ask whether this is finally the “maximum pressure” the Trump administration has been talking about. The short answer is “no.” In terms of length alone, yes, this was the largest set of North Korea designations ever, although we should discount for the fact that most of the 28 ships were effectively designated twice (once per ship, and...

Money Laundering/Sanctions/Shipping sanctions

February 15, 2018

Neither talks for talks’ sake, nor sanctions for sanctions’ sake.

AT THE END OF WORLD WAR II, the U.S. Army assembled a team of experts, including the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, to assess the effects of our strategic bombing campaigns in Europe and Asia. For present purposes, let’s stick to what the Strategic Bombing Survey found about strategic bombing in the European theater: that it lacked focus, hit too wide a variety of targets, and had varying levels of impact on each category of target. Our terror bombing of German...

History/Sanctions

February 2, 2018

Dandong Delenda Est: A little-noticed law may soon raise the pressure on China over N. Korea’s smuggling

IF OUR CHOICES FOR ADDRESSING THE KOREAN MISSILE CRISIS come down to (a) a trade war with China, or (b) a nuclear war with North Korea, which option is worse? If you still believe that begging Kim Jong-un for another piece of paper he doesn’t want and wouldn’t keep is the answer, no amount of evidence will convince you. To accept Pyongyang’s nuclear status in the mistaken belief that conventional means can deter Kim Jong-un’s campaign to gradually blackmail, censor,...

Sanctions/Shipping sanctions

December 5, 2017

So, who else has cut trade with North Korea lately, and who still hasn’t?

With the pace of news of North Korea sanctions news lately, my bookmarks folder is starting to look like what the paramedics found at the Cat Lady’s house after the neighbors noticed a foul odor. Today, I want to catch up with our efforts to deny Pyongyang a haven for its money laundering network, with a focus on Southeast Asia. To review the administration’s progress since January, you may want to start here and here. Ambassador Nikki Haley also gave...

Arms Trafficking/Diplomacy/Sanctions/Southeast Asia

December 1, 2017

Cash & credit squeeze hits China-North Korea trade

One of the more maddening tropes I see in reporters’ coverage is a question that’s usually presented as dispositive to the success of sanctions: “Will China cooperate?” For reasons I’ve already explained and don’t have time to repeat today, I always answer that question by asking what the questioner means by “China.” The point being: yes, it would be nice if Xi Jinping finally came around to the rising risk that Kim Jong-un will bring war, instability, disrepute, and bankruptcy...

China & Korea/Money Laundering/Sanctions

November 27, 2017

Treasury Dep’t hits Sun Sidong, N. Korea’s maritime smuggling & mineral exports

Here at OFK, we’ve chronicled a curious fact that few professional foreign policy scholars have noticed: China is opposed to unilateral sanctions, except when it isn’t. Last week — barely a week after President Trump returned from Beijing — he gave Xi Jinping something to oppose. OFAC designated Dandong Kehua Economy & Trade Co., Ltd., Dandong Xianghe Trading Co., Ltd., and Dandong Hongda Trade Co. Ltd. pursuant to E.O. 13810. Between January 1, 2013 and August 31, 2017, these three...

Arms Trafficking/Money Laundering/Shipping sanctions

November 17, 2017

Singapore’s trade ban with North Korea yields more questions than answers

At first glance, this looks like the State Department’s biggest coup yet in its campaign of progressive diplomacy against Pyongyang. “Singapore will prohibit all commercially traded goods from, or to, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK),” the city-state’s customs said in the notice sent to traders and declaring agents last Tuesday, referring to the country by its official name. The suspension would take effect from Nov. 8, Fauziah A. Sani, head of trade strategy and security for the director-general...

Luxury Goods/Money Laundering/Sanctions/Southeast Asia

November 15, 2017

Senate Banking Committee advances the Otto Warmbier BRINK Act, Treasury blocks the Bank of Dandong

Last week, while I was writing my rave review for Donald Trump’s speech to the South Korean National Assembly, the Senate Banking Committee was working to put more tools in his hands to bankrupt the man he would never stoop to calling “short and fat.”* By a unanimous vote, the committee passed the newly renamed Otto Warmbier Banking Restrictions Involving North Korea (BRINK) Act, which I previously discussed here and here. The bill now awaits Senator McConnell’s nod to get on the full...

Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law/U.S. Politics

November 9, 2017

China cheats on the coal ban again

I still remember my excitement, bordering on giddiness, when in May 2013, a few big banks in China froze some North Korean accounts. That action came two months after the Treasury Department designated North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank, and just over a week after Ed Royce dropped the first draft of the NKSPEA. But as we’ve learned from our friends in the FBI and the Justice Department since then, big Chinese banks began clearing the FTB’s transactions as soon as...

China & Korea/Sanctions

November 3, 2017

How Congress forced the State Department to confront Pyongyang’s crimes against humanity

Last Friday’s post was not the first time I’ve criticized the Trump administration for the inadequacy of its recognition that America shares common interests with the North Korean people in a less murderous North Korean government. I’ve also criticized the inadequacy of the administration’s public diplomacy advocating for those common interests. Long-time readers know I also criticized the last president and the president before that one. But shortly after I published Friday’s post, as if on cue, the State Department issued...

Human Rights/Human Trafficking/Sanctions

October 30, 2017

North Korean assassins arrested in Beijing as Tillerson’s terror sponsor decision looms

If you haven’t read my last post on this week’s deadline for the Secretary of State to decide whether North Korea has repeatedly sponsored acts of international terrorism, you may want to start there. This post will be a combination of breaking news and supplement to that post. This morning, Bloomberg News, citing a report in the Joongang Ilbo, is reporting that yet again, North Korean agents have been caught while on their way to assassinate a dissident in exile....

Money Laundering/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law

October 24, 2017

CNN, UN Panel raise the pressure on Namibia over North Korea sanctions violations

Namibia (or as some refer to it locally, Nambia) has long been one of Africa’s worst violators of UN sanctions against North Korea, including by hosting an arms factory run by Mansudae Overseas Projects Group, in violation of an arms embargo that has been in effect since the adoption of UNSCR 1718 in 2006. It has also been a major consumer of North Korean slave labor (the export of which was only recently truncated by UNSCR 2375) and statues (also...

Africa/Arms Trafficking/Human Trafficking/Sanctions

October 24, 2017

WSJ: Sun Sidong under FBI investigation

Previously, I’ve written about the C4ADS investigation that exposed the Sun Sidong network, and that network’s role in money laundering and arms smuggling for North Korea, most notably the seizure of the Jie Shun arms shipment in Egypt. Shortly after the release of C4ADS’s report, Treasury froze the assets of one of Sun’s companies, Dandong Zhicheng Metallic Materials, and the Justice Department filed a civil forfeiture suit against $4 million of its assets. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that...

Money Laundering/Sanctions

October 16, 2017

On North Korea sanctions, evidence of an inflection point

As I’ve mentioned previously, this has been a busy month for me, and a difficult one for keeping up with the many developments in North Korea sanctions enforcement. Over the last months, I’ve been keeping a tally of how those efforts are taking shape. The accumulating evidence now gives reason for guarded optimism that at last, the sanctions are starting to show significant effects. Financial. Treasury Undersecretary Sigal Mandelker sent the right message to the financial industry in her recent...

Sanctions

October 11, 2017

How the U.S. fishing industry can do its part to disarm Kim Jong-un

Long-time readers know that I’ve had many uncomplimentary things to say about the Associated Press’s North Korea coverage. Its still-undisclosed agreements with the North Korean government to open a bureau in Pyongyang sacrificed journalistic ethics for a dubious dividend of access. Since opening its bureau in 2012, AP and its state-supplied North Korean stringers have reported a great deal of North Korean government propaganda and almost no actual news, while ignoring major news stories (to include a hotel fire, a...

AP Watch/Human Trafficking/Media Criticism/Sanctions/U.S. Law

September 25, 2017

OFK North Korea sanctions explainer page updated

It has been a busy month, but I finally found time last weekend to update the OFK sanctions explainer page with summaries of UNSCR 2371, UNSCR 2375, the Korean Interdiction and Modernization of Sanctions (KIMS) Act, and last week’s Executive Order 13810. I hope to find time to update the sub-pages over the coming weeks.

Sanctions/U.S. Law

Category: Sanctions