No surprises here since I would not be surprised that the Chinese and Russian operatives are actively helping them smuggle the oil:
China and Russia have reportedly put the brakes on the United States for trying to persuade the international community to stop selling refined oil to North Korea this year.
According to international news agencies, including the Associated Press and Reuters, Beijing and Moscow on Thursday blocked Washington from getting the United Nations to publicly blame the North for smuggling more petroleum products beyond the limit imposed by UN sanctions.
Their actions and claim that time is needed to investigate the U.S. allegations automatically delay any U.S. action for six months.
Last week, the U.S. requested the UN Security Council’s North Korea sanctions committee to publicly rebuke the North for violating the quota and enact a ban so countries could not export more petroleum products to the regime for the rest of the year.
U.S. documents sent to the UN committee claim that refined oil was illegally shipped to North Korea through at least 20 ships on 89 occasions between January and May, allowing the regime to secure at least 759-thousand-793 barrels so far this year, above the annual limit of 500-thousand barrels. [KBS World Radio]
This seems like a long time after the fact to be complaining to the ROK Defense Ministry to clean up soil pollution:
Camp Sears in 2005.
The city government of Uijeongbu, north of Seoul, has demanded the defense ministry conduct an examination into soil contamination at a former U.S. military base site in the city, officials said Tuesday.
The Uijeongbu city government bought the former Camp Sears site from the defense ministry in 2012 after the land was returned to the ministry in 2007 under a base consolidation and relocation plan, known as the Land Partnership Program (LPP).
Nine oil tanks had existed on the base to supply oil to other American bases north of Seoul. When the site was returned, most of the land was contaminated, with total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) levels up to 73 times the maximum permissible levels.
The ministry commissioned the Korea Environment Corporation to clean up the site from 2009 and 2012 before the Uijeongbu city government purchased the land as part of a project to establish an administrative complex housing public and government agencies.
Last month, the city broke ground at the site to build a fire department headquarters.
But the construction was halted recently as oil residue was found at the site. Tests were conducted on samples taken from four locations at the site, and two of them had TPH levels of 836 mg per kilogram and 585 mg/kg, which is higher than the permissible 500 mg/kg, officials said. [Korea Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but the ROK Defense Ministry wants tests to be done to prove the pollution is from military activity and not from someone dumping it there after the handover. Camp Sears was closed all the way back in 2005 and it was no secret that fuel tanks were on the base. Here is a 2011 picture of the fuel tanks from after the closure of Camp Sears:
You would think that the city would have done a thorough inspection for pollution around the old fuel tanks. On the old site of Camp Sears a number of government offices were built after its closure and maybe the ROK Defense Ministry is concerned that construction companies were dumping waste on that side of the camp?
This was pretty stupid that this ship would sail into a South Korean port after illegally delivering oil to North Korea:
This composite photo of oil transfer between China and North Korea is captured from the website of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. (Yonhap)
A Hong Kong-flagged vessel has been seized and inspected by South Korean authorities after secretly transferring oil to a North Korean vessel in international waters in a ship-to-ship transfer prohibited by the United Nations Security Council, government officials said Friday.
South Korean customs authorities took and searched the vessel, Lighthouse Winmore, when it entered the country’s Yeosu Port on Nov. 24 after transferring 600 tons of refined petroleum to a North Korean vessel on Oct. 19, the officials said.
UNSC Resolution 2375, adopted in September, bans member countries from ship-to-ship transfer of any goods for North Korea. Resolution 2397, adopted just a week earlier allows a country to capture and look into a vessel suspected of engaging in prohibited activities with North Korea.
The Hong Kong-flagged ship was chartered by Taiwanese company Billions Bunker Group and previously visited South Korea’s Yeosu Port on Oct. 11 to load up on Japanese refined petroleum and head to its claimed destination in Taiwan four days later, the authorities noted.
Instead of going to Taiwan, however, the vessel transferred the oil to a North Korean ship, the Sam Jong 2, and three other non-North Korean vessels in international waters in the East China Sea, they said. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link, but the ROK is expected to hold on to the ship for six months while the legal process plays out. It seems to me the ROK ought to just auction the ship off. How many companies would want to do illegal oil transfers with North Korea if they risk having their shipped sold off?
If the Chinese government wanted this illegal activity to be stopped they could easily stop it, but they are clearly turning a blind eye to this illegal activity. The publication of these satellite photographs is clearly a signal to the Chinese that their bluff is being called after more stringent UN sanctions were passed last week against North Korea:
U.S. reconnaissance satellites have spotted Chinese ships selling oil to North Korean vessels on the West Sea around 30 times since October.
According to South Korean government sources, the satellites have pictured large Chinese and North Korean ships illegally trading in oil in a part of the West Sea closer to China than South Korea.
The satellite pictures even show the names of the ships. A government source said, “We need to focus on the fact that the illicit trade started after a UN Security Council resolution in September drastically capped North Korea’s imports of refined petroleum products.”
The U.S. Treasury Department placed six North Korean shipping and trading companies and 20 of their ships on sanctions list on Nov. 21, when it published spy satellite images taken on Oct. 19 showing a ship named Ryesonggang 1 connected to a Chinese vessel. [Chosun Ilbo]
This composite file photo shows an aerial view of Mallipo Beach (top) in Taean, South Chungcheong Province, covered with crude oil from a supertanker after it collided with a maritime crane on Dec. 7, 2007, and, at bottom, the same view of the beach on Dec. 5, 2017. The collision took place in waters off Taean, leaking 12,547 kiloliters of oil that subsequently hit the country’s pristine west coast, devastating fish farms and beaches. The western coast and sea recovered with the sacrifices of more than 1.2 million volunteers a decade after the country’s worst-ever accident of its kind. (Yonhap)
I did not realize that oil theft was such a common crime in South Korea that the police regularly monitor the pipelines:
This photo, released by the Iksan Police Station in South Korea`s southwestern province of North Jeolla on Aug. 23, 2017, shows a tunnel that a gang of oil pilferers dug in Okcheon, central South Korea. (Yonhap)
Police said Wednesday they have arrested two members of a six-man theft ring accused of having dug a 40-meter tunnel in South Korea’s central province of North Chungcheong for more than one month to pilfer oil from an underground pipeline.
The Iksan Police Station in southwestern South Korea also booked an accomplice and the owner of a gas station involved in the alleged distribution of stolen oil without physical detention.
The gang, including its leader surnamed Lee, met at a warehouse in the town of Okcheon in the province in March and began to dig the tunnel with shovels and hoes to access the supply pipeline of the state-run Daehan Oil Pipeline Corp.
After 45 days of digging, the thieves reached an underground oil pipeline and started to steal oil through a rubber hose they linked to the pipeline, according to the police. They loaded 10,000 to 20,000 liters of the stolen oil a day onto a truck remodeled into a tanker.
According to the police, the oil pilferers installed a CCTV near the tunnel to monitor for police crackdowns. In the last three months, they managed to steal 370,000 liters of oil worth 480 million won (about $423,300) from the pipeline. [Korea Herald]
Here is the latest update on the Yongsan Garrison oil contamination issue:
Land being used by the U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan will be returned to Korea by the end of the year and turned into a public park. Many cases of oil contamination on the base have been exposed since the early 2000s./Yonhap
The Seoul Metropolitan Government is organizing a forum on oil contamination in the soil of U.S. Army Garrison (USAG) Yongsan in central Seoul, Thursday, in an effort to pressure the U.S. to clean the site before its relocation is completed.
The city said the forum has enormous backing from citizens.
“We’re organizing this knowing there’s support coming from the public,” a city official said.
In May, the city conducted a survey of 3,040 Seoul residents, and 65 percent responded that the U.S. military should be held responsible for cleaning up any oil contamination and must do it before the land is returned ― the United States Forces Korea(USFK) headquarters and Eighth Army headquarters are currently relocating to Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, which is expected to be finished by the end of the year.
The city’s move comes after a court ordered the Ministry of Environment to reveal the results of two inspections of the U.S. military base ― it conducted three inspections but only released the results of the first one to the public.
The forum is also intended to pressure the central government ― the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ― to put pressure on the USFK to share data on past contamination records and to clean the site. “To solve this problem, action from the central government is critical,” the official said.
One motivation for the city is money. So far, the local government has paid 7 billion won for cleanup operations outside the base’s perimeter. After the U.S. military moves out, the city will turn the area into a public park. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation estimates the onsite cleanup would cost 103 billion won. Environmental groups’ estimates are more than 1 trillion won.
Green Korea, an NGO advocating for a cleanup paid for by the U.S., welcomed Seoul’s move.
“It’s time for Seoul to act when the central government isn’t doing anything,” said Yoon Sangg-hoon, an activist from Green Korea. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but Green Korea has been pushing this issue since former President Park’s ouster. Green Korea has long been an anti-US organization using the environment as justification for their activities. In regards to the Yongsan oil leaks it has never been proven that the oil is coming from Yongsan Garrison. Additionally of the 90+ leaks reported only 7 were major. It seems Green Korea is inflating the leak number just like in the past the USFK crime rate in Korea was inflated by activist groups by including parking tickets.
Using environmental groups to attack USFK is something that has long been used by the Korean left. The most outrageous example has to be the ridiculous 2000 Yongsan Water Dumping Incident. These environmental groups have primarily focused on stopping the relocation of US bases from the 2nd Infantry Division area and Seoul. Of interest is that the 2006 Il Shim Hue spy scandal uncovered that North Korean operatives were infiltrating the ROK environmental movement to inspire more anti-US sentiment.
This just proves what I have always said, that action speak louder than words when it comes to Chinese government claims they are complying with sanctions on North Korea:
An oil storage and pipeline facility is located in the Chinese border town of Dandong, Liaoning Province, from which crude oil from China is sent into North Korea through a 30.3-kilometer (18.8-mile) pipeline across the border. [SHIN JIN-HO]While the Chinese government claims in official trade figures that it no longer exports oil to North Korea, a JoongAng Ilbo reporter visited a pipeline facility located in the outskirts of the border city of Dandong and witnessed crude oil being loaded into the pipeline for transport across the border.
Located on the China-North Korea border along the Yalu River, this facility is where crude oil goes through a last inspection before being transported across the river.
When the reporter visited the pipeline facility, crude oil was being loaded into the pipeline from oil tankers. The crude oil, which comes from the Daqing Oil Field – the biggest oil field in China located in Heilongjiang Province – was transported there by train and would be piped to a storage facility in Baekma, North Pyongan Province, from which it will be distributed among state agencies, military bases and transport-related factories in the energy-hungry country. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I have never believed that the Chinese government would fully comply with sanctions because even though the Kim regime is a foreign policy headache for them, a collapsed North Korean state would be even worse.
