Tag: sanctions

It is bad enough that Russia and China actively undermine United Nations sanctions against the Kim regime, but now even South Korea is reportedly helping North Korea evade sanctions as well:

North Korea reportedly transported its coal to a third country via South Korea last year in violation of UN sanctions.

The Voice of America(VOA) issued the report on Tuesday, citing information released by an expert panel under the UN committee monitoring sanctions against North Korea.

The panel said that North Korea shipped its coal from Kholmsk Port in Russia to a third country two times via South Korean ports in Incheon and Pohang on October second and 11th last year.

Earlier this year, the panel said in its previous report that the South Korean ports were the final destinations of the North Korean coal. However, in the latest report, it said the shipments were likely headed to a third country, although it is unconfirmed.

Meanwhile, an official at the South Korean Foreign Ministry said that there is a need to confirm the findings of the report.

The UN Security Council Resolution 2371 adopted in August last year imposed a total ban on all exports of North Korean coal.  [KBS World Radio]

This was an encouraging response from Secretary of State Pompeo to North Korean claims of “gangster demands”:

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday his country is making fair demands on North Korea in denuclearization talks, refuting its strongly worded criticism following his latest trip to Pyongyang.

The North openly expressed disappointment over what he put forward during a hourslong bargaining with Kim Yong-chol, a top North Korean official, on Thursday and Friday.

Pompeo presented a “unilateral and gangster-like” demand for “complete, verifiable and irreversible” denuclearization (CVID), the North’s foreign ministry said in a statement issued after his departure.

“If those requests were ‘gangster-like’ then the world is a gangster, because there was a unanimous decision at the U.N. Security Council about what needs to be achieved,” the secretary said in the first U.S. response to the North’s assertion that added to skepticism over future negotiations.

He was speaking at a joint press conference with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts — Kang Kyung-wha and Taro Kono — in Tokyo.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the irony of this is that North Korea is often called the “Sopranos State” and they are ones accusing the US of gangster demands.

Probably the most positive sign in the article is that Pompeo says the sanctions will remain in place:

“Sanctions will remain in place until final, fully verified denuclearization,” Pompeo stressed. “While we are encouraged by the progress of these talks, progress alone does not justify the relaxation of the existing sanctions regime.”

The denuclearization of Korea covers not just nuclear bombs but also missiles, he said, adding North Korean officials also understand that.

On the trustworthiness issue, he said, “There will be a verification connected to the complete denuclearization.”

Like I have always said if the US drops sanctions for little to nothing in return then hit the panic button.  People just need to be patient and let what I think is Kim’s final chance to rejoin the world community to play out.

As I have been saying the North Koreans want the lifting of sanctions to occur for little to nothing in return.  Clearly Emperor President Xi and Czar President Putin are onboard with this position.  The only thing standing in their way right now is President Trump:

North Korea appears to be seeking a lifting of international sanctions imposed on the country by using its longtime ally, China, as leverage.

North Korea is shifting its focus toward economic development, and for that goal, sanctions relief and economic cooperation with other countries will be essential. While it is creating the atmosphere by offering peace through the inter-Korean and the Washington-Pyongyang summits, it seems the North believes China can speed up the process.

Last week, the Japanese media reported China and Russia submitted a statement to the U.N. Security Council seeking the lifting of sanctions on North Korea.

It was reportedly dismissed due to U.S. opposition, which stated North Korea’s denuclearization would have to make progress first.

“China does not regard lifting the sanctions as an end in itself ― the Security Council should support and cooperate in the current mood of dialogue and efforts toward denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lu Kang said in a press briefing, Friday.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but does anyone think President Trump will eventually fold and allow sanctions relief without any real denuclearization efforts by the Kim regime?

I think we can take this as a good sign that the Trump administration will not drop sanctions prior to North Korea taking irreversible denuclearization measures:

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday extended sanctions on North Korea for a year, citing the “unusual and extraordinary” threat posed by its nuclear weapons program.

The extension comes 10 days after Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore, during which the North committed to “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula in exchange for U.S. security guarantees.

“The existence and risk of proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula and the actions and policies of the Government of North Korea continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” Trump wrote in a routine notice to Congress.

For this reason, Trump said, six executive orders that were issued under his and past administrations to sanction North Korea for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs must continue in effect beyond June 26.

“Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to North Korea declared in Executive Order 13466,” he wrote.

The action appears to underscore the Trump administration’s goal of keeping sanctions on North Korea until it takes concrete steps toward denuclearization.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but the Kim regime must have been expecting this considering how muted their reaction has been so far.

Like clockwork here comes surrogates for the Kim regime asking the Trump administration to remove sanctions for little to nothing in return:

Russia called on the United States and its allies on Friday to remove individual economic sanctions they imposed on North Korea besides the ones put forward in the name of the United Nations in line with easing tensions in the region.

“Russia supports the lifting of secondary boycotts that amount to unilateral sanctions, as we maintain a negative stance on those measures against North Korea taken by a slew of countries that circumvented the U.N. Security Council,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a briefing.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but if anything the Trump administration should be preparing for more sanctions to implement to further pressure the regime to take real measures towards denuclearization, not removing sanctions.

Over at One Free Korea he has a posting up that analyzes the recent joint statement between President Trump and Kim Jong-un:

Yesterday, I said the best we could hope for from the Trump-Kim summit would be “a vague agreement that North Korea will denuclearize, without Trump making any concessions for such a nebulous promise.” We have that vague agreement (full text here). It is so vague, in fact, that it’s hard to even say what concessions were given, implied, or will be given in the coming months.

Historically, vague agreements are the agreements Pyongyang loves. One the one hand, it will put an implausibly narrow interpretation on its own concessions: “What you do mean this includes uranium?,” or, “We agreed to stop missile tests, not satellite launch vehicle tests!” On the other hand, it will interpret our own concessions broadly. Here’s a useful map of its demandsto guide your understanding of what it will demand next. What’s clear is that Pyongyang will interpret the terms very differently from what Trump and his cabinet have said they would demand.  [One Free Korea]

As always I recommend reading OFK’s entire well thought out analysis at the link.

I fully agree that everyone should be skeptical of this joint statement.  However, just like the concessions the Kim regime has made so far, the concessions the Trump administration have made are all easily reversible.  Something else to keep in mind is that we don’t know what was privately agreed to during discussions with the regime.  I think we should wait for some time to pass to see how this plays out before we declare this summit just more failed diplomacy between the US and North Korea.  If the Trump administration drops sanctions for little to nothing in return, that should be the trigger to hit the panic button and declare that Groundhog Day has restarted once again with North Korea.

However, the way President Trump has criticized past administrations for getting little to nothing in return from North Korea in past agreements, I would be very surprised if he chooses this route.  I tend to think that the Trump administration is giving the Kim regime one last chance to rejoin the world community and if they don’t reach a comprehensive agreement sanctions will remain in place.  As long as the sanctions are in place ROK President Moon Jae-in will not be able to invest billions into North Korea, re-open the near-slave labor Kaesong Industrial Complex, and open the tourism projects on North Korea’s east coast.

This causes me to think that current negotiations are about what irreversible actions the Kim regime must execute in return for dropping of sanctions.  If the North Koreans drag out negotiations like they historically have done, the Trump administration can easily turn back on the Key Resolve joint exercise scheduled each spring and implement more sanctions to pressure the regime to get a deal done.  If the Kim regime begins another provocation cycle in response the Trump administration can say they have tried everything to peacefully resolve the nuclear issue and military action may become a more viable option.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that and diplomacy between the US and North Korea works for once, but history does indicate we should all remain skeptical until we actually see it happen.

How many people over the years have claimed that sanctions against North Korea won’t work?  Sanctions against North Korea work if everyone enforces them.  Now that the North Koreans are back to negotiate what we will see next is whether the ROK and the US will relieve the Kim regime of the economic pressure they are facing with some kind of nuclear agreement:

The economic pinch is almost certainly why Kim Jong Un is suddenly so eager to talk to the outside world, traveling to Beijing in March and then crossing the demilitarized zone to meet Moon.

“Why would he be doing this unless he was being constrained by sanctions,” said Stephan Haggard, professor of Korea-Pacific studies at the University of California at San Diego and a close monitor of sanctions. “I think he’s sweating.”  (….)

But analysts generally agree that the sanctions must be inflicting serious pain on North Korea, a desperately poor country with a highly inefficient economy.  (….)

The sanctions are probably putting a chill through both these economies. That has to be a huge concern for Kim, who once declared that North Korean people “would never have to tighten their belts again.”

“If I were Kim, I’d be much more worried about textile workers out of work, milling around doing nothing, than I would be about an American attack,” said William Brown, a former intelligence analyst focused on North Korea who now teaches at Georgetown University. Citing the kind of discontent that brought down communist regimes in Eastern Europe, he said, “The real dangers to the regime are internal.”

But Moon could pursue very little economic engagement without sanctions relief.

Not only has the U.N. Security Council imposed waves of sanctions on North Korea, but South Korea imposed its own direct punishment following two deadly North Korean attacks on South Korea in 2010.

Those measures are still in place, and conservative politicians are urging Moon to leave them there. Even if Moon overturned his predecessor’s order to close the Kaesong industrial park, an inter-Korean factory complex on the northern side of the border, transferring money or equipment to it would be almost impossible in the current sanctions environment.  [Washington Post]

This all goes back to why the Moon administration is buttering up Trump with promises of a Nobel Peace Prize by getting on the peace train and believing that North Korea is really going to denuclearize this time.

.@benjaminkatzeff looks into Dandong and finds that laborers are returning to the city, a sign that the Chinese may be relaxing sanctions enforcement there. Read the latest from our affiliate site North Korean Economy Watchhttps://t.co/pcixJL5Ccw pic.twitter.com/yxhCuCeq2W

— 38 North (@38NorthNK) April 9, 2018

Judging by past history the odds are that the South Korean businesses involved with these joint projects will lose out on their investments, but I guess they are hoping things will be different this time:

South Korea is considering a resumption of economic projects with North Korea, but officials are choosing their words carefully since Pyongyang is still subject to international sanctions and the U.S. is still insisting on “maximum pressure.”

With detente seemingly setting in on the peninsula, Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon hinted that the ministry has some plans for economic cooperation with the North. “I think of the issue, but it is not appropriate to [speak] about this now because the president asked us to deal with North Korean affairs very carefully, like handling a fragile glass cup,” Kim told reporters.

Seoul appears concerned about crossing lines set by the United Nations. Most recently, in December, a Security Council resolution limited the supply of crude oil and refined petroleum products to the North, while also banning the country from exporting its food and agricultural products.

But there are also rumblings that South Korea and its state enterprises are eyeing joint projects. Local media reported on Thursday that state-run Korea Expressway Corp. wants to build a highway connecting the South Korean border city of Munsan and Kaesong, a North Korean border city where the neighbors ran a joint industrial complex until 2016.  [Nikkei Asian Review]

You can read more at the link.

The Russian port of Kholmsk sounds like an excellent candidate for secondary customs inspections under section 314 of the KIMS Act. https://t.co/9Zuc42wFFR

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) March 5, 2018