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Category: Arms Trafficking

April 14, 2020

On OFAC’s new North Korea Sanctions regulations

In the days since the Treasury Department announced its amendment to the North Korea sanctions regulations at 31 CFR Part 510, I’ve received at least half a dozen inquiries from journalists about what it means. Unfortunately for us all, today also marks the first day in almost three weeks, inclusive of weekends and holidays, that I did not work a significant amount overtime in my day job—currently, it involves responding to the nationwide coronavirus disaster declaration—so I’ll keep this post...

Categories Arms Trafficking/Money Laundering/Sanctions/Shipping sanctions/U.S. Law
April 11, 2018

Using the law to break Africa’s addiction to North Korean weapons

When Africa binges on North Korean weapons, it doesn’t just deprive Africa of resources its people need for development; it fuels conflict and human rights abuses by some of the world’s most despotic governments. It also finances and encourages Pyongyang’s militarist reunification drive, and helps it buy more weapons for its generals to point at and terrorize South Korean cities. As with arms purchases by Syria, arms sales to Africa are a major hole in our sanctions that the Trump...

Categories Africa/Arms Trafficking
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...

Categories Arms Trafficking/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...

Categories Arms Trafficking/Diplomacy/Sanctions/Southeast Asia
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...

Categories Arms Trafficking/Money Laundering/Shipping sanctions
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...

Categories Africa/Arms Trafficking/Human Trafficking/Sanctions
September 8, 2017

Buzzfeed is out of its depth on Egypt and North Korea sanctions

If journalism can be reduced to its most fundamental purpose, that purpose is to tell the reader important things he does not know. Be mindful of this purpose as we review one example of the slapdash reporting one tends to see whenever North Korea intrudes into the headlines. As the Trump administration scrambles to respond to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, it is trying to coax the country’s smaller trading partners, from Sudan to the Philippines, to ramp up the pressure...

Categories Arms Trafficking/Fiskings/Media Criticism/Sanctions
August 23, 2017

FBI, Treasury & DOJ hit N. Korean enablers with secondary sanctions, forfeitures

Two months ago, the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) released its groundbreaking report, “Risky Business,” which used open-source business records to trace the 5,233 companies that (according to C4ADS) comprise nearly the entirety of North Korea’s “limited, centralized, and vulnerable” financial networks in China. At the time, I speculated that we hadn’t heard the last word from the FBI, the Treasury Department, and Justice Department, and yesterday, my suspicions were confirmed. First, Treasury designated a series of North Korean, Chinese, and Russian...

Categories Arms Trafficking/Money Laundering/Sanctions
July 24, 2017

OFK Exclusive: House, Senate move new North Korea sanctions legislation

Last year, Ed Royce, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Cory Gardner, Chairman of the Senate Asia Subcommittee, led the charge to cut Pyongyang’s access to the hard currency that sustains it by drafting and passing the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act. We’ve known all along that nothing short of presenting Kim Jong-Un with an existential choice — disarm and reform, or perish — would create the conditions for a negotiated disarmament of North Korea,...

Categories Arms Trafficking/Money Laundering/Sanctions/Shipping sanctions/U.S. Law
June 1, 2017

What the Chinpo Decision doesn’t mean for the U.N.’s North Korea sanctions

Since the High Court of Singapore reversed part of the conviction of Chinpo Shipping for its role in financing the 2013 Chong Chon Gang arms shipment just over two weeks ago, and despite the crush of other (still unfinished) commitments that have eaten up my blogging time, I’ve wanted to set a few minutes aside to post some thoughts on the decision. (If you haven’t already looked up “chinpo” at Urban Dictionary, you really shouldn’t.) Let’s start with what the decision...

Categories "United" Nations/Arms Trafficking/Sanctions/Southeast Asia
April 10, 2017

The MKP Group’s website is a feast of mendacity, quackery, possible illegality, and web design hilarity

The aftermath of Kim Jong-nam’s assassination, and the attention it has drawn to North Korea’s connections to Malaysia, continues to yield new revelations about Pyongyang’s illicit finances overseas. Reuters, having already exposed Glocom as a front for the Reconnaissance General Bureau, now adds to what the Wall Street Journal reported two weeks ago about the MKP Group. To summarize Reuters’s extensive and detailed report on MKP: it was founded by a North Korean named Han Hun-il and a Malaysian named...

Categories Arms Trafficking/Money Laundering/Sanctions
February 27, 2017

Malaysia’s lax enforcement of North Korea sanctions has finally come home

Over the weekend, Malaysian authorities painstakingly decontaminated a terminal of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport where North Korean agents – including a diplomat – carried out a lethal attack with the nerve agent VX, a substance so deadly that a tiny droplet can kill an adult. The authorities are clearly concerned that the use of a persistent chemical weapon of mass destruction in a crowded airport terminal will cause panic among Malaysian citizens and members of the traveling public, as...

Categories Arms Trafficking/Money Laundering/Sanctions/Shipping sanctions/Southeast Asia
February 8, 2017

Leaked U.N. report reveals record seizure of North Korean arms last August (updated)

The 2017 report of the U.N. Panel of Experts isn’t due to be published for another month, but a Kyodo News reporter has already obtained and published leaked excerpts. The focus of Kyodo’s story is the now-familiar (and unquestionably accurate) castigation of member state governments for not putting enough will or resources into the enforcement of North Korea sanctions, but I’d like to start with this revelation: “An interdiction of the vessel Jie Shun was the largest seizure of ammunition...

Categories Arms Trafficking/Shipping sanctions
August 11, 2016

Angola is playing fast and loose with North Korea sanctions

Like its neighbor, Namibia, Angola aligned with the Soviet block during the Cold War. The Angolan government and the Namibian rebel movement, the South West Africa Peoples’ Organization or SWAPO, received military assistance from Cuba, which had up to 60,000 soldiers near Angola’s border with Namibia during a vicious set of guerrilla wars in the 1990s. The Soviet Union is gone, but historic alliances can be persistent things, especially when those alliances also come with financial ties. This has certainly...

Categories Africa/Arms Trafficking/Sanctions
June 27, 2016

Top Namibian official visits Pyongyang

  In March, this blog reported on the revelation by the U.N. Panel of Experts that the African nation of Namibia, a desert country in the southwest corner of the continent, had hired North Koreans, including representatives of U.N.-designated KOMID, to build an arms factory near Windhoek. At the time, Deputy Prime Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah came to her government’s defense, admitting that her government was the site of a North Korean-run arms factory, but denying that the arrangement violated U.N....

Categories Africa/Arms Trafficking/Sanctions
May 25, 2016

Seoul’s diplomacy targets North Korea’s arms trade in Africa

Just last week, I wrote that South Korea’s diplomatic efforts to secure compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 2270 were putting ours to shame. Seoul is now offering fresh evidence of this by doing what I’ve said for weeks that our own diplomats should be doing — going on tour in Africa to pressure defense ministries to stop buying from Pyongyang. Seoul’s direct approach to two countries with close military ties to Pyongyang highlights its push to stem North Korea’s...

Categories Africa/Arms Trafficking
April 12, 2016

Angola may be defying U.N. sanctions against North Korea

A report last month by the U.N. Panel of Experts found that Namibia has been involved in joint projects with KOMID, a designated North Korean entity, to build an arms factory in the African nation. The finding drew a defiant response from the Namibian government, but as a defense to a sanctions violation, it was a blue answer to a red question. In response, I wrote this post — which attracted much attention in Windhoek — rebutting Namibia’s argument and explaining...

Categories Africa/Arms Trafficking