Tag: sanctions

The AP is taking the side of the North Koreans in regards to their sanctions demands:

President Donald Trump said he walked away from his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un because Kim demanded the U.S. lift all of its sanctions, a claim that North Korea’s delegation called a rare news conference in the middle of the night to deny.
So who’s telling the truth? In this case, it seems that the North Koreans are. And it’s a demand they have been pushing for weeks in lower-level talks. (…….)

The U.N. Security Council has imposed nearly a dozen resolutions targeting North Korea, making it one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world. So Kim was indeed seeking a lot of relief — including the lifting of bans on everything from trade in metals, raw materials, luxury goods, seafood, coal exports, refined petroleum imports, raw petroleum imports.
But Kim wasn’t looking for the lifting of sanctions on armaments. Those were imposed earlier, from 2006, when the North conducted its first nuclear test.
For Pyongyang, that’s a key difference.

Associated Press

I think it is more accurate to say that the North Koreans are trying to get a lifting of all the sanctions that matter. Lifting the sanctions they want would be a huge economic boon to the Kim regime without fully denuclearizing. That money would all the regime to further modernize their military and illicit weapons programs.

It looks like there will be a vodka shortage for a little while for the Kim regime elite:

Dutch customs officials at the port of Rotterdam have seized 90,000 bottles of vodka believed to be destined for the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and his army chiefs.
The discovery, on the eve of Kim’s two-day summit with Donald Trump in Hanoi, was made after Dutch authorities flagged up the suspicious route and records of a Chinese-owned container ship, Nebula.

The Russian vodka, contained in 3,000 boxes, had been recorded as being due for unloading in China, via the ports of Hamburg and Rotterdam.
When officers sought to retrieve the container from the ship’s hull, it was found to be concealed and hemmed in by the fuselage of an aircraft also due to be exported to China.

The Guardian

You can read more at the link.

As long as these companies are allowed to operate without facing consequences, the Kim regime will continue to be able to break sanctions:

A Russian tanker violated international trade sanctions by transferring fuel to a North Korean vessel at sea at least four times between October 2017 and May 2018, two crew members who witnessed the transfers said.

Such transactions could have helped provide North Korea with an economic lifeline and eased the isolation of the secretive communist state, whose leader, Kim Jong Un, is due to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Vietnam this week.
Primportbunker, the owner of the vessel the crew members said made the transfers, did not respond to requests for comment by telephone. No one answered the door when Reuters visited the building where Primportbunker has its headquarters in the port city of Vladivostok on Russia’s Pacific coast.

On the four voyages between Oct. 13, 2017, and May 7, 2018, the Tantal tanker gave its destination as the Chinese port of Ningbo when it set sail, according to port documents seen by Reuters and tracking data from financial data company Refinitiv.
It then met up in international waters with a North Korean vessel to which it transferred its cargo of fuel, the two crew members who witnessed the transfers said.
The two crew said the fuel transfers took place when the Tantal’s transponder, which allows the vessel to be tracked at sea, was not operating. Shipping industry experts said this indicates the transponder was deliberately turned off or the Tantal had entered a zone not covered by ship-tracking radar.
On each occasion, the transponder started operating again when the Tantal was close to port in Russia, the two crew said.

Reuters via a reader tip

You can read more at the link.

It will be interesting to see what sanctions relief the Trump administration is willing to give and what they get in return for the Trump-Kim II Summit:

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mentioned easing sanctions while talking about North Korea and the US’ denuclearization negotiations. In an interview with the press on Feb. 13, Pompeo said that “it’s our full intention of getting a good outcome in exchange for relieving those sanctions. I’m very hopeful that we can do that.” 

Pompeo publicly indicated a willingness to relieve sanctions just a week or two before the second North Korea-US summit raises expectations about the prospects of the two countries’ negotiations.

The US’ previous position had been that sanctions will not be eased or lifted until North Korea’s complete denuclearization. But leading up to the second summit, the North has called for the easing of sanctions, which it says are incompatible with improving bilateral relations. Pompeo’s remarks suggest that the US has come to terms with the fact that North Korea cannot be persuaded to take steps toward denuclearization without a little quid pro quo in the form of easing sanctions. 

Hankyoreh

You can read more at the link, but the Kim regime and the Moon administration would love nothing more than re-opening the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the joint tourism projects on the East Coast. Both are large cash cows for the Kim regime that have little impact on North Korean society.

I have been saying that the Trump administration must be offering something the Kim regime wants in order to agree to a second summit, sanctions relief or a Korean War peace treaty would do it:

U.S. President Donald Trump will most likely offer North Korea some kind of relief from international sanctions or a peace treaty in the near future, a prominent DPRK watcher and legal scholar told NK News last week.
Speaking in Washington DC ahead of a conference hosted by NK News’s parent organization the Korea Risk Group, Tufts University’s Sung-Yoon Lee said the international community’s  growing lack of political will to enforce sanctions will likely allow the U.S. to reward Pyongyang for what he described as its “fake concessions” on the nuclear issue.
“Trump will be willing to lift sanctions formally, I believe, not all sanctions, but he might say, ‘okay the poor starving North Korean people, they are suffering, so let’s lift sanctions on the ban of export of seafood and textiles,’” Lee, Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor in Korean Studies and Assistant Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said.
“If the U.S. takes the lead in bending the rules – U.S. rules as well as UN Security Council resolutions – who will object? China? No. South Korea? No. Russia? No. Britain and France which really don’t have a bone in this fight? No,” he added. “So it’s all up to Trump and I think Trump is more than willing to offer premature sanctions relaxation.”
In a wide-ranging interview, Lee also discussed why he believes it’s “too late” to bridge the gap between the U.S. and North Korea on denuclearization definitions, ROK President Moon Jae-in’s role in promoting dialogue with the DPRK, and what he sees as Pyongyang’s long-term goal: forcing U.S. withdrawal from the peninsula and the region.

NK News

You can read the whole interview at the link, but Professor Lee believes that sanctions relief and a peace treaty will in the near future be offered by the US.

However, squabbles over the definition of denuclearization could cause North Korea in the next few years to detonate a hydrogen bomb in the atmosphere over the Pacific to make the point their nuclear program is now complete. I don’t see them doing that due to the affect such a detonation would have on satellites. Taking out satellites with an EMP blast I think would lead to a call for regime removal; just imagine the global financial and economic impacts of losing satellites in low Earth orbit. The outrage I believe would be huge.

I don’t think the Kim regime would risk the blowback which would leave them with an above ground test option. If they were going to do an above ground test they would have to do it over the surface of a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. Seems pretty challenging logistically for the North Koreans to pull off such a test, but if they get billions of dollars in cash from the South Koreans and sanctions relief may be they can pull it off.

#MoonJaein openly and continually violates sanctions. Is it time for the #UN and the #US to add him to the lists of sanctioned individuals? https://t.co/VMdP7j5xsX

— Gordon G. Chang (@GordonGChang) January 16, 2019

It appears the Kim regime wants the Moon administration just to bust international sanctions without the approval of the US:

 A North Korean propaganda outlet accused South Korea of what it claims to be stalled inter-Korean cooperation on Friday, saying that Seoul cannot make a single step it wants to due to pressure from Washington.
The criticism comes as Seoul and Washington held their second “working group” meeting in Seoul to discuss coordination on how to deal with North Korea and its nuclear weapons program.
“South Korean authorities should feel responsible for depressing the inter-Korean relations on the back of the U.S.’ maneuver for sanctions and pressure before talking about its ‘driver theory,'” the website Uriminzokkiri said, referring to President Moon Jae-in’s pledge to take the initiative by sitting in the “driver’s seat” when handling North Korean affairs.
“Nothing would be resolved as long as (Seoul) continues to curry favor with the U.S., tied by its dependence on outside powers and blind following of the U.S.,” it added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This news is not going over well with the Kim regime: 

The outlook for a second Washington-Pyongyang summit is dimming amid an escalation of diplomatic tit-for-tat, after the U.S. imposed sanctions on three ranking North Korean officials Monday. 

The U.S. Treasury Department cited “serious human rights abuse and censorship” as reasons for the sanctions on the North’s de facto No. 2 figure, Choe Ryong-hae. The two others are State Security Minister Jong Kyong-thaek and Pak Kwang-ho, director of the Workers’ Party’s propaganda department.

The decision drew a strong backlash from the North, as this is the first time the U.S. has imposed human rights sanctions against the regime since the leaders of the two countries met in June to discuss peace and denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.

Korea Times

You can read the rest at the link, but as expected the North Korean state controlled media is blasting this decision to sanction the three regime officials.  

I think these sanctions are just a further warning to the Kim regime that the Trump administration is losing patience with their denuclearization delay games.  

It is starting to become pretty clear that sanctions will ultimately be dropped before North Korea denuclearizes based on the new rhetoric coming from the White House:

ohn Bolton, the U.S. national security adviser, said Thursday that Washington will remove sanctions when it sees “performance” from North Korea and advocated a second summit between the two countries’ leaders.

In an interview with Washington-based National Public Radio (NPR), Bolton discussed a second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and said it will be possible “sometime after the first of the year.” 

Through a second North-U.S. summit, Bolton said Trump “is trying to give the North Koreans a chance to live up to the commitments they made at the Singapore summit” and has “held the door open for them.

“They need to walk through it,” Bolton continued. “This is one more chance for Kim Jong-un, who is the only decision maker that matters in the North Korean system, to deliver on what he said in Singapore.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.