US sanctions ships suspected of smuggling

WASHINGTON >> The United States on Wednesday slapped sanctions on six North Korean ships, 16 individuals and nine companies that it said had facilitated Pyongyang’s weapons programs in an effort to further isolate the regime.

The sanctions are a part of a strategy by the Trump administration to pressure North Korea into abandoning its nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

Increasingly, the administration has been turning its attention to the smuggling going on despite a round of U.N. sanctions.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson attended a conference in Vancouver last week in which diplomats from 20 nations discussed ways to intensify pressure on North Korea, particularly by stopping ship-to-ship transfers in open water.

The United States is trying to build support for its campaign to get nations to blacklist ships involved in smuggling goods to North Korea from any port in the world, and conduct maritime interdiction.

The sanctions were announced shortly after Japan announced one of its spy planes had photographed a North Korean tanker that was likely to be violating sanctions by transferring cargo from one ship to another.

According to Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, photos taken Saturday show the Rye Song Gang 1 pulling alongside a Dominican-flagged ship, the Yuk Tang, in the middle of the night. Shortly after the sun rose on Saturday morning, the two ships sailed away from each other.

The sanctions by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control listed six ships that sail under the North Korean flag - the Goo Ryong; the cargo ships Hwa Song, Un Ryul and Ever Glory; the tanker Kim Un San; And the cargo ship Ul Ji Bong 6, which loaded on coal at a North Korean port and delivered it to Russia in September.

Under the sanctions designations, the vessels are blocked, which imposes a ban on transfers or dealings of any kind. Americans are prohibited from dealing with the companies that own them, and international banks that do any kind of transactions with them are subject to U.S. sanctions.