NYT: How China helped N. Korea buy ski lift cable cars, and break U.N. sanctions

Yesterday, I posted about hunger in North Korea, the fact that Kim Jong-un is spending the nation’s lunch money on missiles and ski resorts, and the importance of helping the North Korean people make that connection though a comprehensive information operations strategy. The New York Times has bolstered the evidence of North Korean and Chinese culpability for this tragedy with a detailed report on North Korea’s purchase of the equipment for its ski resort through China.

Previously, NK News revealed that the Masikryeong Ski Resort was filled with foreign-sourced equipment, and identified most of the manufacturers (if you aren’t a subscriber, there’s a version here, at The Telegraph). The question left unanswered, however, was whether the North Koreans obtained the equipment directly from the manufacturers, or through China. The Times found evidence in China’s own customs data proving that it was the source of at least some of the equipment.

The cable cars for the Masikryong ski resort, which are at least 30 years old and out of fashion on European ski slopes, were made by Doppelmayr, an Austrian company, and used for years in Ischgl, a skiing town in Austria. After the resort decided to install new cable cars, the old ones were sold to an Austrian secondhand dealer, Pro-Alpin, according to Ekkehard Assmann, head of marketing at Doppelmayr.

Pro-Alpin, in turn, sold the cable cars to an unidentified Chinese company, according to Pro-Alpin’s website. The Chinese company then arranged for the equipment to be shipped to North Korea. [NYT, Jane Perlez & Yufan Huang]

The Times also examines China’s lame and risible excuses for ignoring the U.N. luxury goods sanctions it repeatedly voted for at the Security Council.

By almost any estimate, the sale of such items appears to violate the intent of United Nations sanctions meant to punish the North for its nuclear weapons program — specifically, sanctions targeting luxury goods, intended to cover products like Champagne and caviar, yachts and expensive cars.

But China, whose companies were involved in providing the equipment for the Masikryong ski resort, which opened in 2013, told a United Nations panel that those sanctions did not apply because skiing is a “normal activity” in North Korea, a country where most of the population is impoverished and food shortages are common. “Skiing is a popular sport for people, and ski equipment or relevant services are not included in the list of prohibited luxury goods,” the Chinese said, according to last year’s annual report from the United Nations panel, which monitors sanctions violations. [….]

The luxury goods sanctions have a glaring loophole: Each country is permitted to define what it considers luxury goods. The United States has published a detailed list, down to such items as vanity cases, binoculars and television sets larger than 29 inches. The European Union says “articles and equipment for skiing, golf, diving and water sports” are luxury goods and bans them from export to North Korea. [NYT]

Here is the U.S. list (see Supplement 1), and here is the EU list (see Annex III). Yet, nearly a decade after the U.N. Security Council approved resolution 1718 ….

But China has failed to publish such a list and has not honored those of other countries, the documents of the United Nations panel show. Because it has never said what it considers to be luxury goods, China can argue that cable cars for Mr. Kim’s prestige resort were permissible, even justifying them as equipment for the masses.

“China appears impervious to shame,” said Marcus Nolan, of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, who said there were no penalties for flouting the luxury goods sanctions. [NYT]

The Times also traces the genesis of Xi Jinping’s obstructionist policy toward sanctions enforcement generally.

The Chinese hope to prevent tougher sanctions for fear that the North will become a hostile neighbor, a policy that diplomats said appears to have been shaped by President Xi Jinping last summer. In talks last week with his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Secretary of State John Kerry made little headway in persuading China to toughen sanctions against North Korea, and he warned that the United States would most likely move ahead on its own. [NYT]

The policy isn’t entirely a new one. Diplomatically speaking, Xi is more openly obstructionist than his predecessors, but China has a longstanding pattern and practice of violating sanctions against North Korea related to proliferation, arms sales, deceptive financial practices, and luxury goods.

What neither Xi nor President Obama counted on, however, was that Congress would seize the initiative.

Tougher sanctions legislation is moving through Congress that, among other things, would target Chinese banks that do business with North Korea. The administration has been reluctant to call for such sanctions, known as secondary sanctions, and it is not clear what the White House would do about the legislation, American experts said.

“Given the broad and variegated bilateral relationship between the United States and China, U.S. officials have been reluctant to confront and economically punish China with secondary sanctions in case it should undermine other key priorities in the bilateral relationship,” said Elizabeth Rosenberg, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. [NYT]

The Times also gives us some absolutely breathtaking data on what Kim Jong-un is wasting on luxury goods, while most of his subjects are food-insecure, malnourished, stunted, or starving.

Chinese customs data showed that North Korea imported $2.09 billion in luxury goods between 2012 and 2014, according to recent congressional testimony by Bonnie S. Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Among the items that have slipped through the sanctions are Mercedes-Benz S-Class cars, photographs of which appeared in last year’s United Nations report. An unidentified American company armored the cars, the report said. It also said that a luxury yacht worth as much as $6 million, made by a British company, Princess Yachts International, made it into North Korea and has been used by Mr. Kim.

In 2014, China exported $37 million worth of computers; $30 million of tobacco; $24 million of cars; and $9 million of air-conditioning equipment to the North, according to trade statistics from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. In all these categories, China was the top exporter, the United Nations said. [NYT]

As the Times notes, “luxury goods may seem a relatively minor issue,” but “they help to ensure the loyalty of the tiny elite around” His Corpulency, thus helping to preserve its cohesion. Their availability also sends a signal inside Pyongyang that the regime is financially secure, bolstering the confidence of the elites in the regime’s survival.

There is also another, more important, reason why luxury goods sanctions matter. It bears repeating that the World Food Program’s operations in North Korea cost just $100 million a year, to feed just 2.4 million women and children, a figure that undoubtedly includes substantial salary and overhead costs. If the period from 2012 to 2014 is inclusive, that’s a three-year period, and an expenditure of almost $700 million a year — an even higher estimate than the one I cited here.

Yesterday, I posted evidence that for many North Koreans, the food situation remains desperate. No government has a sovereign right to steal and waste the wealth of its people when the people are hungry. Viewed this way, North Korea’s luxury goods imports and missile tests aren’t just a sanctions violation, they’re a crime against humanity. What’s especially frustrating is that it’s a crime the world has the power to prevent, by putting North Korea’s assets into financial receivership. The world’s financial regulators should put Kim Jong-un and his minions on notice that their offshore bank accounts are available to buy food, medicine, and humanitarian supplies, but not for ski resorts and luxury cars.