Like I have said before these sanctions are only as good as they are enforced:
A North Korean military officer, right, and another North Korean stand behind a pile of coal Dec. 14, 2012, along the banks of the Yalu River in the northeast of the North Korean border town of Siniuju. (Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images)
The United Nations Security Council voted Saturday for the third time in two years to block countries from buying North Korean coal, the country’s primary export, in a move intended to choke off funding from Kim Jong Un’s weapons programs.
The new ban plugs a loophole that allowed North Korea to sell coal to China under the guise of “humanitarian” trade, even though much of North Korea’s coal trade has been devoted to weapons development, not humanitarian purposes, according to recent U.S. court filings.
The humanitarian loophole was large enough that after the first such U.N. ban in March 2016, Chinese companies actually imported more North Korean coal. [Washington Post]
The entire country has been bad so they all got a lump of coal in their Christmas stockings…