China Helps North Korea Import Infant Formula New Cars Despite U.N. Sanctions

I dedicate this post to John Feffer and Christine Ahn, who may now rest in the security of knowing that U.N. anti-proliferation sanctions aren’t causing starvation in North Korea:

Around 100 Chinese-made cars have been brought into North Korea through a checkpoint on the border with China, probably for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to give to favored officials. The delivery was made on Tuesday, two days before former leader Kim Il-sung’s birthday, which is the biggest holiday in the North.

A North Korean source saw around 30 identical vehicles crossing the bridge across the Apnok (or Yalu) River into Sinuiju at around 9 a.m. The vehicles were the Chinese compact sedan F3 manufactured by BYD, referred to as the “people’s car” in China due to its popularity.

Also, the name “kraft durch freude wagen” was already taken.

Around 100 cars reportedly crossed the border into North Korea on Tuesday alone. Starting last week, North Korea brought in more than 200 cars, including luxury foreign cars, jeeps and large vans. The total value of the imported cars is believed to be around US$5 million. [Chosun Ilbo]

Well, this is probably just another of those fragmentary hearsay reports passed along by some anonymous smuggler or God-bothering missionary with a cell phone. Oh, wait:

Busted. And as a point of order here, UNSCR 1874, the sanctions resolution, exempts humanitarian aid and “legal economic activities,” but specifically prohibits the import of luxury goods (which a private automobile certainly is by North Korean standards, if not by ours). Unless there are plans to use these cars for a fleet of black Pyongyang taxicabs, this is direct evidence of China’s bad faith passing right before the eyes of its border guards in broad daylight. The same principles applied to UNSCR 1718, which didn’t stop Kim Jong Il from importing luxury sedans at $80,000 a pop in early 2009.

Don’t forget those yachts, either.

More broadly, a detailed study of China’s trade with North Korea shows that China increased its bilateral trade with North Korea after the North’s 2006 nuclear test, effectively undermining that resolution (which it voted for) and UNSCR 1695 before it (ditto). China is now trying to do the same with UNSCR 1874 to preempt any threat to the stability of a useful client regime that helps keep America’s forces in the region off balance, keeps Korea divided and prevents its rise as a powerful democracy in the region, and gives China cheap access to Korean mineral resources.

What else did you expect? China likes this status quo, is perfectly to bleed North Korea to the last kkotjabi to maintain it, may not even see North Korea’s proliferation of WMD technology to anti-American terrorists as an entirely adverse development.