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March 24, 2016

China’s reaction to North Korea shipping sanctions shows strain, confusion

Two weeks ago, I surveyed the evidence of China’s compliance with new U.N. sanctions and found “mixed, yet hopeful signs.” One area in which the signs has seemed especially hopeful was the enforcement of shipping sanctions. The Philippines had already seized one designated ship, the Sierra Leone-flagged M/V Jin Teng, and detained another, the non-designated, North Korean-crewed, Tuvalu-flagged tanker M/V Theresa Begonia. There was also some evidence that Chinese ports were complying, but we’ll get to that later. Under the...

China/Diplomacy/Sanctions

March 23, 2016

North Korean diplomats behaving badly

If you’re a North Korean diplomat, a good general rule is that all publicity is bad publicity. Over the last two weeks, North Koreans, most of them diplomats or former diplomats, have attracted much publicity of the kind they couldn’t have wanted. The Chinese government reports that “a North Korean consular official” killed two Chinese citizens while driving home drunk in Dandong last month. The North Korean diplomat was on his way home from an “event celebrating North Korea’s launch...

Diplomacy/Money Laundering/NK Crime/Sanctions

March 21, 2016

China & Russia alarmed about secondary sanctions, because sanctions never work.

After years of extensive, flagrant, and well-documented violations of U.N. sanctions against North Korea, China is finally reaping the consequences. Americans don’t agree on much anymore, but Beijing’s cheating has achieved a political impossibility — it has united 418 representatives, 96 senators, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the mainstream of North Korea watchers in support of secondary sanctions on the (mostly Chinese) banks and businesses that are propping up Kim Jong-un financially. That policy is now expressed in law, and the...

China/Diplomacy/Russia/Sanctions

March 18, 2016

Designation of N. Korea’s propaganda agency could mean trouble for AP Pyongyang

Yesterday, a reader — he can identify himself if he chooses to do so — asked me an excellent question that had not occurred to me: what are the implications for the Associated Press’s Pyongyang Bureau of the Treasury Department’s designation of North Korea’s Propaganda and Agitation Department for censorship? From Treasury’s Wednesday press release: OFAC has designated the Workers’ Party of Korea, Propaganda and Agitation Department (the “Propaganda and Agitation Department”) as an agency, instrumentality, or controlled entity of the...

AP Watch/Censorship/Sanctions

March 17, 2016

Obama blocks N. Korean assets, bans labor exports, sanctions ships and banks.

Just this morning, I was writing about reports that President Obama would sign a new North Korea sanctions executive order. The Executive Order the President signed this afternoon takes several important steps toward implementing the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, and to a lesser extent, U.N. Security Council Resolution 2270. Full implementation will require years of aggressive investigation and designation of targets, but this is a good start. The text of the E.O. itself is strong, exceeding in several...

Anju Links

March 16, 2016

U.S. will announce new North Korea sanctions as early as this week.

At this event at the Heritage Foundation yesterday, I emphasized that U.S. and U.N. sanctions are mutually complementary, and that for the U.N. sanctions to work, the U.S. must show its determination to back them with the new authorities in H.R. 757, and by harnessing the power of the dollar. The signs I’m seeing this week all suggest that the Obama Administration finally gets this. On Monday, President Obama said “that effective enforcement of sanctions on North Korea is one of the key tasks...

"United" Nations/Diplomacy/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law

March 16, 2016

President Park demands end to North Korea’s “tyranny”

Park Geun-hye has a long and distinguished history of saying next to nothing about human rights in North Korea, so these remarks are another welcome step in the right direction: “I will sternly and strongly deal with North Korea … until North Korea embarks on the path toward denuclearization and ends the tyranny of oppressing the human rights of North Korean people and pushing them to starvation,” Park said in an annual meeting with South Korea’s top envoys around. A...

Human Rights/North-South

March 15, 2016

So far, sanctions are cutting off Pyongyang’s cash while sparing North Korea’s poor.

A month after the President signed the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act and two weeks after the U.N. Security Council approved Resolution 2270, enough information has emerged from North Korea to allow for a preliminary assessment of how the sanctions are affecting those they are meant to target, and those they are meant to spare. Sanctions have begun to hit their intended targets. The Daily NK reports that the donju, the well-connected traders who help finance Pyongyang’s priorities through trade with...

Border Control/Capitalism/Class Warfare/Famine & Food Aid/Sanctions

March 15, 2016

HSBC freezes “at least” $87M in assets of North Korea-linked Chinese tycoon

You all remember Sam Pa, right? He’s the Chinese ex-spy with a history of dubious business dealings in Africa, for which he was eventually sanctioned by the Treasury Department. Pa’s 88 Queensway group also had dealings with Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation, a financial arm of North Korea’s Bureau 39, for which he was not designated. Today, this happened: HSBC has frozen more than $87m in accounts linked to a Chinese tycoon behind several multibillion-dollar deals in Africa, while it investigates allegations of...

China & Korea/Money Laundering

March 14, 2016

Namibia’s prohibited arms deal with N. Korea triggers mandatory sanctions under U.S. law.

Namibia is a beautiful desert country with a turbulent history. Some years ago, when I worked in South Africa, I flew from Johannesburg to Cape Town, took a bus across the border to Keetnamshoop, and hitch-hiked to the isolated town of Lüderitz, which sits where the barren dunes of the Namib Desert spill into the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Lüderitz was established by German colonists in the 19th Century; today, many of their descendants still live in the...

"United" Nations/Africa/Sanctions

March 11, 2016

Park Geun-hye finds her inner Thatcher

This week, the South Korean government imposed bilateral sanctions on North Korea, banning from its harbors ships that have been to North Korea in the last 180 days, cancelling a joint logistics project with Russia to export coal through Rajin, and designating “30 companies with links to the North’s nuclear and missile programs …, 38 North Korean nationals and two foreigners.” The targets include “Leonard Lai, president of Singapore-based Senat Shipping” (see this post) and “the Taiwanese president of Royal Team...

Kaesong/Korean Politics/North-South/Sunshine

March 10, 2016

Before Josef Schwartz spends an eternity in Hell, would Austria please send him back to prison?

Reading through the new Panel of Experts report, I saw a finding, at Paragraph 108, relating to two 2011 “[s]hipments of spare parts and equipment for submarines and military boats brokered by Green Pine” — a North Korean trading company designated by the U.N. over proliferation concerns — “from Austria to Angola and Viet Nam.” Reading on, I saw that “[t]he consignments were shipped from Vienna by an Austrian national, Josef Schwartz, through his company, Schwartz Motorbootservice.” Remember him? Sure you...

Europe/Luxury Goods

March 10, 2016

Convicted N. Korean spy now protesting against sanctions in front of the Pentagon

Years before the Democratic Labor Party lawmaker Lee Seok-ki was recorded on a wiretap plotting violent attacks in support of a proposed North Korean invasion, the DLP was rocked by another North Korean fifth column scandal — the alleged Il Shim Hue spy ring. On October 24th, 2006, South Korea’s state intelligence agency, the NIS, arrested three men: Michael Jang, former Democratic Labor Party (DLP) central committee member Lee Jeong Hun, and the head of a private education institute, Son Jeong...

The Fifth Column

March 9, 2016

N. Korea sanctions are failing because of China. That’s why we need secondary sanctions.

Last November, I put up a post cataloging China’s long and deep history of breaking U.N. sanctions against North Korea. The post, which relied heavily on reports of the U.N. Panel of Experts monitoring North Korea sanctions, attracted a great deal of attention, including from Senate staff as they considered the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act. The new POE report, released yesterday, is almost 300 pages long (including exhibits) and has more than enough material to make a rich...

"United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions

March 9, 2016

Beyond sanctions: S. Korea should open direct, people-to-people cell service for N. Koreans

With much of the North Korea policy debate understandably focused on sanctions this week, I hope North Korea watchers won’t miss this new report from Amnesty International on the efforts by “Swiss-educated reformer” Kim Jong-un to seal off all unauthorized contact between his subjects and the outside world. In recent years, the principal medium for such contact has been the use of Chinese cell networks whose signals penetrate a few miles into North Korea. Those calls had become an important lifeline...

Propaganda/Subversion

March 9, 2016

U.N. report: Bank of China told shipper in illegal arms deal to hide N. Korean links

Today, the U.N. Panel of Experts monitoring (non-)compliance with its North Korea sanctions released its latest report, and it’s a doozy. Including exhibits, it’s almost 300 pages long, and the substance should be material for several posts. Our first installment comes from the December 2015 conviction of Chinpo Shipping over the 2013 Cuba arms shipment. Remember last July, when I asked, “What about the Bank of China?” Well, we have our answer, and from the look of it, the Bank of...

China/Money Laundering/Sanctions

March 8, 2016

China’s compliance with North Korea sanctions, so far: mixed, yet hopeful signs.

As I’ve long argued in these pages, China has a long history of evading and violating the North Korea sanctions it votes for at the U.N. Without the threat of secondary sanctions, it will revert to non-enforcement. When the next U.N. Panel of Experts report is published in the coming days, it will reveal yet more extensive evidence of sanctions violations by Chinese banks, ports, and businesses, often with the knowledge of the government agencies that regulated them. Since early...

Sanctions

March 6, 2016

WaPo editorial: “China’s switch” on N. Korea sanctions “had a lot to do with” H.R. 757.

After the President signed H.R. 757 into law, but before the U.N. Security Council approved resolution 2270, sanctions skeptics predicted that the new U.S. law would complicate diplomatic efforts to get China to enforce U.N. sanctions. Events thus far have refuted that view. After the President signed the new law, China, which had inflexibly opposed new U.N. sanctions for weeks, reversed course and voted for the strongest North Korea sanctions resolution so far. Even before China’s official retreat, China’s banks had already begun to freeze...

"United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions