NORTH KOREA’S $270M EXPORTS FLOUT SANCTIONS

▶ Pyongyang ignores curbs on commodities and arms embargo, says UN

North Korea defied UN sanctions to illegally export coal, iron and other commodities worth at least US$270 million (Dh992m) to countries including China India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka in the six months to August.

UN experts monitoring sanctions say Kim Jong-un’s government continued to ignore sanctions on commodities, an arms embargo and restrictions on shipping and financial activities.

They said North Korea was also defying bans on nuclear activity by producing weapons-grade material at the Yongbyon complex, building and maintaining the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, and working a uranium mine in Pyongsan.

The eight-member panel of experts said it was also investigating the presence of North Koreans in Africa and the Middle East, particularly in Syria, “including their involvement in prohibited activities”.

They said one line of inquiry was into “reported prohibited chemical, ballistic missile and conventional arms co-operation” between Damascus and Pyongyang.

They said this included Syrian Scud missile programmes and “maintenance and repair of Syrian surface-to-air missile air defence systems”.

The panel noted that two unidentified countries reported intercepting shipments destined for Syria.

Its 111-page report was written before North Korea’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test last Sunday and its latest launch of a new intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan.

Last week the US called for a vote on new sanctions. The original draft would impose the toughest sanctions yet on North Korea, including a ban on all oil and natural gas exports to the country and a freeze on the assets of president Kim Jong-un and his government.

The experts said the implementation of existing sanctions “lags far behind what is necessary to achieve the core goal of denuclearisation” of the Korean Peninsula.

They blamed “lax enforcement” of sanctions coupled with North Korea’s “evolving evasion techniques” for defeating this goal, which would result in the North abandoning all weapons of mass destruction.

The experts said that after China suspended coal imports from the North in February, the Kim regime has been selling coal to other countries, including Malaysia and Vietnam.

“The panel’s investigations reveal that North Korea is deliberately using indirect channels to export prohibited commodities, evading sanctions,” the report said.

It said imports of North Korean coal, iron and iron ore breached UN sanctions unless the countries had received an exemption.

Between December last year and May this year, Pyongyang exported iron ore worth more than $79m to China, the report said. And between October and May, it exported iron and steel products to Egypt, China, France, India, Ireland and Mexico valued at $305,713.

There are no exemptions for importing silver, copper, zinc, nickel and gold from the North.

And since December, the experts said, China, Sri Lanka and India imported one or more of these minerals.

The panel said it was investigating Angola, Congo, Eritrea, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda and Syria over breaking arms embargoes.

And it said many North Korean financial companies kept representatives overseas who were involved in deals that enabled banned activities, and many foreign financial institutions wittingly or unwittingly provide banking services to North Korean front companies.

One line of inquiry was into prohibited chemical and ballistic missile co-operation between Syria and North Korea