Yonhap: N. Korea Using Heavy Fuel Oil for Military Exercises
[Update: I have to say that my doubts about this one, as expressed by my question below about refining, are considerable. Heavy fuel oil is nearly as thick as asphalt, not something I’d think could be refined into lighter, higher octane products cheaply. Bruce Klingner’s comment below adds to those doubts, and I offer a more plausible explanation. As with every other question about the diversion of aid to North Korea — and here is yet another such question — we’ll only really know when North Korea allows for some transparency and verification.]
Yonhap reports that while the North Korean people shiver, Kim Jong Il has found other uses for the nearly 200,000 tons of heavy fuel oil (HFO) the United States, China, Russia, and South Korea have provided him under Agreed Framework 2.0:
North Korea has been increasing ground and air maneuvers since December, military sources said Sunday, amid concerns that the North might have been diverting some of the heavy fuel oil provided under a multilateral denuclearization deal. [. . . .]
“Intelligence authorities of South Korea and the United States have been analyzing the sharp increase in the North’s winter maneuvering of armoured units,” a military soure said Sunday. “They have recently conducted both armoured unit maneuvers and artillery strike training concurrently, although they had usually focused on artillery strikes.”
The source attributed the increased mechanized unit maneuvering to improvement in oil supply in the North, questioning the source of the oil spent on the military training amid skyrocketing crude prices in the international market.
Another source said North Korea might be appropriating the heavy fuel oil provided under the nuclear deal and diverting some cash taken from inter-Korean economic cooperation projects to military use. “We understand North Korea has been enhancing the number of flights flown for training,” he said. [Yonhap]
I already know what you’re thinking.
As you know, we’ve been subsidizing South Korea’s defense and stationing our own soldiers on its soil for decades. For the most recent one, South Korea has been sustaining the very threat we were ostensibly protecting it from with billions of dollars in regime-sustaining aid. And for about a year now, we’ve been eagerly awaiting a GAO report that should tell us whether we violated our own money laundering laws by giving Kim Jong Il $25 million he made by counterfeiting our own currency, selling drugs, and God-knows-what, no questions asked. Now, we’re directly helping the North Korean army train itself to kill American soldiers and shell Seoul, while the North Korean people freeze.
Neither morality, law, nor irony is an obstacle to this policy, but it’s still fun to keep a rolling tally, and here, I can make an argument that the State Department’s continued provision of HFO would violate U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718:
(a) all Member States shall prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the DPRK, through their territories or by their nationals, or using their flag vessels or aircraft, and whether or not originating in their territories, of:
(i) any battle tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles or missile systems as defined for the purpose of the United Nations Register on Conventional Arms, or related materiel including spare parts, or items as determined by the Security Council or the Committee established by paragraph 12 below (the Committee);
[….]
(c) all Member States shall prevent any transfers to the DPRK by their nationals or from their territories, or from the DPRK by its nationals or from its territory, of technical training, advice, services or assistance related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance or use of the items in subparagraphs (a) (i) and (a) (ii) above; [UNSCR 1718]
A technical question I have is just how easy is it to turn HFO into something that can fuel tanks and aircraft. Wouldn’t that require a substantial amount of refining?
As for the diversion of cash from “inter-Korean projects” for military uses, that’s a much clearer violation of 1718. Under Paragraph 9.d, member states must “ensure” that “any funds, financial assets or economic resources are prevented from being made available by . . . any persons or entities within their territories” for use in North Korea’s WMD programs. If South Korea has no clue where the money is going, but does know that some of it may be diverted to other military uses, it has an obligation to suspend all aid until it can account for its use.
What an age we live in. To suggest that we’ve been abetting genocide draws shrugged shoulders at most, but unilateralism? ‘Tis an unforgiveable blasphemy.
The media report has the sound of someone reporting on something they either don’t understand or without a historical knowledge.
The “diverting heavy fuel oil for military use” is a non-issue since the type of fuel that is delivered (described as so thick that it is almost sludge) cannot be used in armored vehicles and certainly not in airplanes. the issue came up occasionally during Agreed Framework days and was always dismissed by experts who also said North Korea’s refining capabilities wouldn’t allow it to convert the HFO to military use.
It is also unclear whether the reporter and/or sources meant the “sharp increase” in military activity is compared with the rest of the year or as compared with yearly norms. The annual Winter Training Exercise starts in December with in-garrison training and then moves to field training exercises in January, increasing in echelon until the culmination in March with a corps-level exercise (usually one of the mechanized corps 815th, 806th, 425th, or 108th).
Every year, the Intelligence Community carefully monitored the movement of the corps in March since it could be a precursor to military attack or at least military provocation near the DMZ (1993 and 1994 were particularly nervous for us).
The big corps movement may now be once every three years (rather than every year as I remembered it) since it’s been some years since I monitored NK conventional force activity at CIA (1993-2001).
The combined arms exercise described in the article (air units in concert with ground forces) was seen in the 1990s with, if I remember correctly, the 108th mech corps in the northeast. I can’t remember if some naval units exercised at the same time.
That was my question, too. As I said above, it would seem that the North Koreans would have to re-refine the HFO to use it in tanks — I believe older Soviet tanks generally burn diesel — and especially aircraft fuel, which is like kerosene. I can imagine turning HFO into diesel with some work and expense, but it’s difficult to imagine turning HFO into kerosene.
A more plausible explanation is that North Korea, in the expectation that it would receive a greater share of its HFO needs from outside, shifted its refining capacity and commericial POL purchases to diesel and aircraft fuel. That mirrors how the North Koreans diverted food aid.
Marcus Noland has observed that when more international food aid arrived, North Korea diverted more of its cash to commercial purchases of non-food items, thus depressing the overall increase in food supply.
A good overview of the heavy fuel oil ‘problem’ can be read in the opening pages of ‘South Korea’s Power Play at the Six-Party Talks’ at
http://www.nautilus.org/napsnet/sr/2005/0560ROK_Energy_Aid.pdf
A closer reading of the terms used in the current ‘sell out’ reveals the use of some not-very-subtle weasel wording such as ‘… heavy fuel oil … or its equivalent (read cash)’.