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Category: Sanctions

February 13, 2017

Some on-point congressional testimony on sanctions as part of a broader N. Korea policy

Reuters reports that, following North Korea’s weekend missile test, the Trump administration “will consider a full range of options in a response to Pyongyang’s missile test” that are “calibrated to show U.S. resolve while avoiding escalation.” Those options will include increasing “pressure on China to rein in North Korea,” “new U.S. sanctions to tighten financial controls, an increase in U.S. naval and air assets in and around the Korean peninsula and accelerated installation of new missile defense systems in South Korea.”...

Categories Sanctions/Washington Views
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
January 27, 2017

China’s latest cheating on North Korea sanctions is a test for Trump

Like most people, I would prefer that the new President of the United States refrained from conducting diplomacy by Twitter. Without endorsing the medium, I gave a qualified endorsement to the message President Trump sent to China when he accused it of not helping to reign in His Porcine Majesty. Trump was right about this, of course. Over the last several years, the U.N., no less, has published a wealth of evidence that China has (almost certainly willfully) violated the North...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions
January 17, 2017

North Korean ship that sank last week may have been used for arms smuggling

A North Korean freighter with the not-entirely-Korean-sounding name of Chong Gen went to the bottom of the Tsushima Strait last week with nearly 5,720 tonnes* of rice aboard. The crew sent a distress signal and took to their lifeboats in time for the Japanese Coast Guard to rescue the entire crew of 26. All are reported safe. Lucky them. Most North Korean ships that have arrived in Japan recently have carried only the dead. Now, I’m no maritime expert, but 26 sounds like a very...

Categories Shipping sanctions
January 13, 2017

Treasury designates N. Korea’s Himmler & “Angel of Death,” & Kim Jong-un’s sister

On Wednesday, the Treasury Department designated seven North Korean officials under Executive Order 13687, and two ministries under Executive Order 13722 (the authority has legal implications, which I’ll touch on later in this post). Along with the designations, Treasury and State issued, respectively, a statement and a report explaining the designations. “The North Korean regime not only engages in severe human rights abuses, but it also implements rigid censorship policies and conceals its inhumane and oppressive behavior,” said John E. Smith,...

Categories Human Rights/Sanctions
January 10, 2017

WaPo: Trump’s Asia team leans toward sanctioning N. Korea’s Chinese enablers

For now, this is mostly leaks and whispers in a Josh Rogin column, but it’s encouraging. Behind the scenes, however, the Trump transition is preparing its own pivot to Asia. As the team that will implement that policy takes shape, what’s emerging is an approach that harkens back to past Republican administrations — but also seeks to actualize the Obama administration’s ambition of enhancing the U.S. presence in the region. Transition officials say the Trump administration will take a hawkish...

Categories Sanctions/Washington Views
January 4, 2017

Yun Byung-se, The Indispensable Man

Park Geun-hye, the cautious triangulatrix who belatedly became South Korea’s most subversive (to North Korea) president for two decades, is all but gone, and almost everyone in South Korea is applauding. None, however, have applauded with as much enthusiasm as those on South Korea’s far left, who fill a spectrum between anti-anti-North Korean and violently pro-North Korean. The left now senses that it has an advantage headed into next year’s presidential campaign and hopes to end Seoul’s campaign of diplomatic...

Categories Africa/Diplomacy/Human Trafficking/Sanctions
December 12, 2016

The Rime of the Uninsured Mariner

Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the albatross About my neck was hung. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner If last week’s posts on U.N. security council resolution 2321 and the recent Treasury Department designations have had a common theme, it’s that Treasury’s reasonably strong designations have done much to redeem a relatively weak U.N. resolution, and to warn Chinese banks and companies about the risks...

Categories Shipping sanctions
December 7, 2016

For North Korean banks, 2016 has been like that Corleone baptism montage

Years from today, North Korean bankers will remember 2016 as their annus horribilis. In February, a month after the North’s fourth nuclear test, Congress passed, and the President signed, the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act. Section 201 of the new law all but compelled the Treasury Department to designate North Korea a Primary Money Laundering Concern under section 311 of the Patriot Act. Section 311 allows for a menu of special measures to protect the financial system against...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
December 6, 2016

The U.S. may (finally) be serious about capping North Korea’s coal exports

For almost three months after North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, the U.N. Security Council remained deadlocked over how to respond, with the U.S. and its allies pressing to limit Kim Jong-un’s access to hard currency and China trying to shield its belligerent protectorate from the consequences of its behavior. Among the most hotly debated questions was how to limit North Korea’s coal exports to China, one of His Porcine Majesty’s most important sources of hard currency. Although UNSCR 2270, passed...

Categories China & Korea/Sanctions
December 4, 2016

What the Treasury Department’s blocking of Air Koryo means

Last week’s North Korea sanctions designations by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control — commonly known as OFAC — go far to explain why U.N. Security Council Resolution 2321 took so long to negotiate and pass. There were many reasons why I panned the terms of that resolution last week, including new and not-improved coal export limits, and the U.N.’s failure to designate North Korea’s state airline, Air Koryo. Friday’s OFAC designations — which block any of...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea/Sanctions
December 2, 2016

Why Seoul’s blacklisting of Air Koryo & Dandong Hongxiang matters

South Korea is the first of the Free Three (the U.S., South Korea, and Japan) to announce independent multilateral sanctions on North Korea following the approval of UNSCR 2321. Some of the measures, such as the blacklisting of Choe Ryong-hae and Hwang Pyong-so, will probably mean almost nothing until some future left-wing president tries to give one of them a ticker-tape parade along the Chongro. An extension of South Korea’s ban on ships that have entered North Korean ports within...

Categories China & Korea/Korean Politics/Sanctions/Shipping sanctions
December 1, 2016

Yonhap: U.S., ROK & Japan to impose coordinated sanctions independently of U.N.

With reaction to UNSCR 2321 ranging from the skeptical to the unfavorable, U.S. and South Korean diplomats have been practicing their skills at porcine cosmetology this week. But if the generals in Pyongyang are already quaffing Hennessey to celebrate the latest advance for the byungjin policy, that may be premature. The Security Council may not have the last word on North Korea’s September 9th nuke test after all: South Korea, the United States and Japan are preparing to announce their own sanctions on...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
November 29, 2016

The U.N.’s new North Korea resolution wasn’t worth the wait

Lest anyone think I’m blindly criticizing the Obama administration as it tries to cover its exit and legacy, start with my favorable comments on UNSCR 2270. That resolution might have been the baseline for a genuinely effective global sanctions program, but the text of the new resolution the Security Council will vote on tomorrow arguably lowers the high bar set by 2270. Indeed, because of our independent authority to enforce 2270 in tandem with our allies, we would have been...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
November 22, 2016

China breaks N. Korea sanctions it says won’t work because it’s afraid they’ll work

In yesterday’s post, I linked to reports suggesting that China’s failure to agree on the terms of a new U.N. sanctions resolution responding to North Korea’s latest nuclear test may be motivated by a desire to wait out the end of President Obama’s administration. This theory would only make sense if China figures it can get better terms from President Trump next year, but my post pointed to evidence of the opposite of this — that what we know so...

Categories China/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Politics
November 21, 2016

If China is gambling on Trump to blunt N. Korea sanctions, it could lose bigly*

By all outward appearances, President Obama never really had a coherent North Korea policy. While pursuing a deal that Pyongyang either didn’t want or wouldn’t keep, it reacted to each nuclear test by building on John Bolton’s work and nominally tightening the sanctions the U.N. initially imposed a decade ago, in Resolution 1718. The idea, apparently, was to deter Pyongyang by threatening its plans to develop Hamhung and Chongjin, something it no more intends to do than the Confederacy intended...

Categories "United" Nations/China/Sanctions/U.S. Politics
November 7, 2016

Treasury finalizes cutoff of N. Korean banks from U.S. financial system

After a long delay, the Treasury Department has issued its final rule prohibiting financial institutions operating in U.S. jurisdiction from providing direct or indirect correspondent account services to North Korean financial institutions. In English, that means North Korean banks are now denied a critical link for accessing the global financial system. North Korea is now one of only three countries to be declared a Primary Money Laundering Concern by the Treasury Department, and is the only country subject to Special Measure...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
October 27, 2016

This time, FATF’s warning on North Korea really is a big deal

It has now been an inexplicably long four months since the Treasury Department announced its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to designate North Korea as a jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern, in which it stated its intent to cut off North Korean banks’ access to correspondent accounts in the dollar financial system. Under section 311 of the Patriot Act, however, such a cutoff only becomes legally enforceable after Treasury publishes its final rule, which Treasury still has not done, and...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions