Tag: sanctions

You would think this would be bigger news that the South Korean government is intentionally allowing North Korea to violate sanctions using their ports 52 times over the past year:

An opposition lawmaker claimed Sunday that three more foreign vessels suspected of carrying North Korean coal, a banned item under international sanctions, entered South Korean ports 52 times since August last year.

Yoo Ki-june of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party made the claim, arguing that the Seoul government did not take due steps such as the interdiction of the suspicious vessels in line with U.N. Security Council (UNSC) mandates.

Adopted in December last year following the North’s launch of a long-range missile, UNSC Resolution 2397 allows a country to capture and look into a vessel suspected of engaging in prohibited activities with North Korea. Resolution 2371, passed in August last year, imposes a blanket ban on the overseas sale of North Korean coal, iron ore and other mineral resources.

Yoo’s argument came amid media speculation that Seoul, which has been pushing for inter-Korean rapprochement, has not been thoroughly monitoring foreign vessels that enter South Korea with North Korean coal disguised as Russian products, possibly in violation of the sanctions regime.  [Yonhap]

It is bad enough that the Chinese and the Russians are helping the North Koreans to bypass the coal sanctions and new the ROK is as well.  If President Trump wants to Tweet about something, this should be it.

Here is another example of a forum being used to pressure the US to drop sanctions against North Korea:

The top diplomats of the two Koreas and regional powers engaged in a flurry of diplomatic talks over the past few days in Singapore, although no breakthroughs were made toward Pyongyang’s denuclearization and the proclamation to formally end the Korean War.

This year’s ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) followed two inter-Korean summits at the Panmunjom truce village in spring and the unprecedented North Korea-U.S. summit in this city-state in June.

It was a sort of prelude to the U.N. General Assembly to be held in New York next month.

The gathering was widely expected to help maintain the momentum for constructive dialogue amid some signs of an impasse in the Korea peace process.

The U.S. is pressing the North to take concrete denuclearization steps, beyond a show of dismantling nuclear and missile testing sites in the absence of international experts.

The North says it has done a lot, and the Trump administration should reciprocate.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but wouldn’t it be great if President Trump responded to criticisms of reciprocating Pyongyang’s so called “good-will” gestures by saying that the US is showing good-will by not bombing them?

Funny thing about sanctions — the year we start to enforce them just happens to be the year Kim Jong-un shows up for summits w/ 3 foreign heads of state. You can argue whether sanctions helped diplomacy, but events refute any argument that they've hampered it. https://t.co/roKbGUdxn2

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) August 4, 2018

This is all so predictable:

North Korea on Saturday said the US was acting with “alarming” impatience on the issue of denuclearisation, after Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, stressed the need to maintain full sanctions pressure on Pyongyang.

The contrasting comments at a security forum in Singapore came after a UN report showed Pyongyang was continuing with its nuclear and missile programmes and evading sanctions through ship-to-ship oil transfers.

At historic talks with Donald Trump, the US President, in June, Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, signed up to a vague commitment to “denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula” – a far cry from long-standing US demands for complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.

While US officials have publicly been optimistic about the agreement, Pyongyang appears to have made little substantial progress and Washington has become concerned that some UN member states are easing sanctions.

At the ASEAN Regional Forum, Ri Yong Ho, North Korea’s Foreign Minister, criticised US impatience on denuclearisation.

“What is alarming, however, is the insistent moves manifested within the US to go back to the old, far from its leader’s intention,” he said, according to a statement.

Hidden trillions: What if North Korea’s economy opened up?

There has been a John Feffer sighting in the Hankyoreh.  For those that don’t know who Mr. Feffer is, he is a long time North Korea apologist who once equated Kim Jong-il to former President George Bush.  Feffer even incredibly once claimed that Kim Jong-un was not responsible for the Great Famine in North Korea that needlessly killed hundreds of thousands of his own citizens.  Now Feffer is advocating for the Moon administration’s request for the US to approve exemptions on sanctions on North Korea:

North Korea has not pushed forward with denuclearization as quickly as some observers hoped. It hasn’t taken any steps to reduce its nuclear arsenal. In fact, according to a recent U.S. intelligence assessment, North Korea continues to produce highly enriched uranium for additional nuclear weapons.

Nor has North Korea even provided a list of all its nuclear-weapons-related sites or an inventory of its nuclear weapons.Still, North Korea has given several indications that it is serious about de-escalating tensions. It has maintained a moratorium on all missile and nuclear tests. It at least partially destroyed its nuclear test site at Punggye-ri (it may only have destroyed the entrances rather than the tunnels themselves). And most recently it began the partial dismantlement of its satellite-launch station.

None of these moves is irreversible. But given the Trump administration’s tendency to renege on deals – like the Iran nuclear deal – North Korea would frankly be crazy to do anything yet that it can’t later reverse.  [Hankyoreh]

Notice how Feffer tries to make it out that it is all President Trump’s fault that North Korea has done nothing meaningful to denuclearize, ignoring the fact North Korea has never done anything meaningful and it has always been the US being the one making concessions in the past.

Here is where he gets into the easing of sanctions:

South Korea has also taken some important steps forward on conflict reduction. Most recently, it reported that it will reduce the number of guard posts along the DMZ and withdraw some military equipment as well. The United States, however, has not made any reciprocal moves. It canceled the summer military exercises with South Korea. But it hasn’t shown any flexibility on the issue of economic sanctions.Indeed, the Trump administration has pushed for stricter implementation of sanctions at the UN, citing North Korean violations of petroleum imports.

The United States has upped the pressure on China and Russia to enforce these sanctions. And last week, several U.S. government agencies send out an advisory that reminded businesses and individuals of the penalties of engaging economically with Pyongyang. Seoul has officially requested exemptions to the sanctions that would allow it to pursue certain economic projects with Pyongyang. It will likely have the support of both Russia and China for such exemptions.

The ball is in the U.S. court. If Trump truly wants to move forward with the deal he struck with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, then he has to put his money where his mouth is.The U.S. government can grant these exemptions while still maintaining an otherwise strict sanctions regime. It can still prevent U.S. businesses and individuals from engaging with North Korea.

It can still push for the tighter implementation of sanctions connected to critical resources, like petroleum, that North Korea needs.What South Korea is looking for, however, are exemptions that would permit the restart of joint economic programs like the Kaesong industrial zone and inter-Korean tourism operations.

The Kaesong Industrial Complex and the joint-tourism projects established by prior left-wing South Korean governments were major foreign revenue generators for the Kim regime.  We heard for years about how these engagement projects would change North Korea.  Well the engagers and apologists were right North Korea did change, they used the revenue to help fund their ballistic missile and nuclear programs that now can now threaten the entire region and even the US homeland.

Now the engagers and apologists want to double down on their failed ideas, but the big question is if President Trump wants to double down with them?

We could all see this coming, the leftists in the Moon administration want to get special exceptions to the international sanctions on North Korea:

South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on Monday rejected concerns about Seoul’s alleged move to ease international sanctions on Pyongyang, saying it is seeking an “exception” to facilitate cross-border exchanges.

Kang made the remarks upon arrival from her visit to the United States, amid media speculation that she stressed the need for an easing of the sanctions during her meetings with the U.N. Security Council member states.

“Now is not a phase when sanctions are being eased. … It is not an easing of sanctions,” the minister said. “(What I stressed) was to get exceptions from the sanctions, which are needed for inter-Korean projects.”

Since early this year, concerns have persisted that Seoul’s push for an increase in cross-border exchanges could contribute to an unraveling of the sanctions regime, which analysts said has helped Pyongyang change its calculus on its nuclear program.

Asked about whether her visit to the U.S. this time was aimed at playing a role as an intermediary between Washington and Pyongyang, Kang stressed the importance of communication between the allies.  [Yonhap]

If the Trump administration allows the easing of sanctions that would allow the reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the joint-tourism projects in North Korea they might as well scrap the sanctions all together.  These former joint-projects were major generators of foreign revenue for the Kim regime that gave them the resources necessary to develop their nuclear program in the first place.

Wouldn’t it be great if when Secretary of State Pompeo meets with Kang Kyung-wha he instead briefs her on a plan to introduce new sanctions due to nothing significant having been reaching on North Korea’s denuclearization?

Like I have been maintaining, I don’t think anyone should panic unless sanctions are dropped for little to nothing in return from North Korea.  This recent announcement suggests the sanctions will remain in place:

South Korea and the United States agreed Thursday to keep enforcing sanctions against North Korea until it takes “concrete, verifiable” steps toward denuclearization, during their biannual working-level defense talks.

During the 14th Korea-U.S. Integrated Defense Dialogue (KIDD) in Seoul, the two sides also shared the view that there is a need to continuously explore ways to build trust with Pyongyang as long as the communist state maintains a “good-will” dialogue.

Seoul’s defense ministry announced the outcome of the two-day talks. Deputy Minister for National Defense Policy, Yeo Suk-joo, represented the South Korean side, while Roberta Shea, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense, led the U.S. delegation.

During the talks, the two sides mentioned “meaningful progress” following two inter-Korean summits in April and May and last month’s U.S.-North Korea summit despite concerns over a perceived lack of progress in the North’s denuclearization process.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder what the Moon administration’s definition of “concrete, verifiable” steps is?

I would love to know what the Kim regime’s internal timeline is for when they expect sanctions to be dropped?:

North Korean state media urged the country’s people to be ready for “belt-tightening” Monday amid signs of stalled denuclearization talks with the United States.

The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, reminded them of the harsh period of Arduous March in the 1990s, when the country suffered from extreme poverty and massive starvation in the wake of the collapse of socialism in Russia and Eastern Europe.

“Even if (we) have to travel a long distance through snowstorms with our belts tightened, we will go straight to the people’s road which was proved as immortal in the process of the 70-years-long struggle and to the road of socialism,” the newspaper said.

The call comes as concerns are growing about the denuclearization talks between the North and the U.S. The slower-than-expected progress clouds the prospects for any immediate sanctions relief, which Pyongyang might be pursuing to bolster its anemic economy in return for giving up its nuclear weapons.

The call for belt-tightening might be intended to tamp down expectations among its people that have been high since North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, followed by his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, observers said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

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]

Good luck trying to make this happen:

The United States on Friday welcomed the U.N. Security Council’s united support for the fully verified denuclearization of North Korea and pressed China and Russia to strictly enforce U.N. sanctions to get Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused North Korea of violating an array of tough sanctions imposed by the council. He warned that ”when sanctions are not enforced, the prospects for the successful denuclearization of North Korea are diminished.”

Nonetheless, Pompeo told reporters after meeting behind closed doors with the 15 council members that President Donald Trump ”remains upbeat about the prospects for denuclearization” following his historic summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. ”So do I, as progress is happening,” he added without elaborating.

The Trump administration hopes that one day North Korea will be at the United Nations ”not as a pariah but as a friend,” Pompeo said. But ”it will take full enforcement of sanctions for us to get there” as well as Kim following through ”on his personal commitments” to Trump.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I have to hand it to Secretary Pompeo, he is doing everything possible to not be seen as the belligerent whenever the breaking point with North Korea’s foot dragging on denuclearization happens.