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December 2, 2016

Why Seoul’s blacklisting of Air Koryo & Dandong Hongxiang matters

South Korea is the first of the Free Three (the U.S., South Korea, and Japan) to announce independent multilateral sanctions on North Korea following the approval of UNSCR 2321. Some of the measures, such as the blacklisting of Choe Ryong-hae and Hwang Pyong-so, will probably mean almost nothing until some future left-wing president tries to give one of them a ticker-tape parade along the Chongro. An extension of South Korea’s ban on ships that have entered North Korean ports within...
Categories China & Korea/Korean Politics/Sanctions/Shipping sanctions
November 22, 2016

China breaks N. Korea sanctions it says won’t work because it’s afraid they’ll work

In yesterday’s post, I linked to reports suggesting that China’s failure to agree on the terms of a new U.N. sanctions resolution responding to North Korea’s latest nuclear test may be motivated by a desire to wait out the end of President Obama’s administration. This theory would only make sense if China figures it can get better terms from President Trump next year, but my post pointed to evidence of the opposite of this — that what we know so...
Categories China/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Politics
November 21, 2016

If China is gambling on Trump to blunt N. Korea sanctions, it could lose bigly*

By all outward appearances, President Obama never really had a coherent North Korea policy. While pursuing a deal that Pyongyang either didn’t want or wouldn’t keep, it reacted to each nuclear test by building on John Bolton’s work and nominally tightening the sanctions the U.N. initially imposed a decade ago, in Resolution 1718. The idea, apparently, was to deter Pyongyang by threatening its plans to develop Hamhung and Chongjin, something it no more intends to do than the Confederacy intended...
Categories "United" Nations/China/Sanctions/U.S. Politics
October 25, 2016

While Obama sleeps, China cheats, and Korea’s doomsday clock ticks

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.” – Winston Churchill It has now been six weeks since North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, and the U.S. and China remain deadlocked in their talks about a new resolution to close the loopholes in existing U.N. sanctions. Pyongyang is racing to make its nuclear armament a fait accompli before the next U.S. administration warms the...
Categories China/Money Laundering/Sanctions/Shipping sanctions
October 12, 2016

How to close the livelihood loophole in N. Korea sanctions, even without China’s help

It has now been more than a month since North Korea carried out its fifth nuclear test, and the U.N. Security Council has yet to respond by approving a new resolution to strengthen its sanctions. After North Korea’s previous nuclear tests, it took between four and six weeks to overcome Chinese and Russian objections, and the world is growing impatient. As noted yesterday, the U.S. is correctly focused on cutting off North Korea’s sources of hard currency. Judging by the...
Categories China/Sanctions
October 5, 2016

China suppresses “viral” images of anti-Kim Jong-un protest in Yangzhou

A favorite long-time reader and volunteer copy-editor forwards this fascinating story, via the UPI’s Elizabeth Shim. An anti-Kim Jong Un rally was held in a Chinese city but photographs of the protest were promptly deleted by Chinese government censors, according to the Chinese-language press. Protesters in the eastern Chinese city of Yangzhou gathered to express their opposition to North Korea’s nuclear tests and to condemn the North Korean leader. The photos then went viral on Chinese social media, Hong Kong’s...
Categories China
September 19, 2016

Congress to Obama: Enforce N. Korea sanctions against Chinese banks

Three weeks before North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, I wrote, “The Obama administration isn’t following Kim Jong-un’s money. Congress should ask why.” Unfortunately, subsequent events soon affirmed that criticism; fortunately, Congress is asking, and it’s asking the right questions. The failure of the administration’s North Korea policy has even become an election-year liability for Hillary Clinton, forcing her to distance herself from the President and his policy (or more accurately, the lack of one). The Obama administration’s single greatest North...
Categories China/Sanctions/U.S. Politics
September 12, 2016

Clinton’s North Korea epiphany: We have always been at (cold) war with China

So desperate are we to avoid a Cold War (or worse) in the Pacific that throughout the Obama years, we’ve pretended that China hasn’t been waging one unilaterally the whole time. Meanwhile, China has seized the South China Sea, bullied our allies with spurious territorial claims, whipped up anti-American rhetoric to persecute human rights activists, and effectively quit enforcing sanctions against North Korea despite signing on for a nominally tough new resolution in March. Evidence, you ask? Start with this...
Categories China & Korea/Sanctions
August 19, 2016

Wall Street Journal calls on Obama administration to hit N. Korea with secondary sanctions

It’s always rewarding to know that someone is reading my screeds: The promise of secondary sanctions is that they can force foreign banks, trading companies and ports to choose between doing business with North Korea and doing business in dollars, which usually is an easy call. That’s what happened a decade ago when the U.S. blacklisted Macao-based Banco Delta Asia and spurred a cascade of other Chinese banks to drop their North Korean clients lest they lose access to the...
Categories China/Sanctions
July 13, 2016

China’s next maritime conflict could be with North Korea

This week, the eyes of the world are on arbitrators’ rejection of China’s made-up claims to the South China Sea. Further north, however, Pyongyang’s lease of fishing rights to Beijing threatens to instigate violent brawls between North Korean and Chinese fishermen. Earlier this year, China stopped accepting imports of North Korean seafood. The reasons for this still aren’t clear, but one possibility arises from a report that much of North Korea’s fishing fleet is controlled by the Reconnaissance General Bureau,...
Categories China & Korea
July 6, 2016

The evidence of China’s compliance with North Korea sanctions is still mixed.

This week, there has been much talk and excitement about a new study, by the new blog Beyond Parallel, analyzing satellite imagery of six select sites along the Chinese-North Korean border, and finding evidence of a recent decline in bilateral trade. From this, the study concludes that China may be (as Josh Rogin paraphrases it for The Washington Post) “Beijing has been quietly punishing Kim by cutting off the flow of funds to his regime.” Here are the study’s two main...
Categories China & Korea/Sanctions
May 23, 2016

Stop saying N. Korean overseas laborers aren’t slaves. They are, and here’s proof.

You absolutely must watch this extraordinary work of investigative journalism by Vice, exposing the North Korean slave labor racket in Poland. There are English subtitles available. What is so exceptional about this reporting is that its detailed and careful investigation makes it immediately actionable. With a little googling, it’s possible to identify the names, position titles, and e-mail addresses of the Polish and North Korean companies involved. That’s enough for the Treasury Department to add all of them to the list of...
Categories China/Europe/Human Trafficking
March 28, 2016

Daily NK: China not taking North Korean coal shipments

Last week, I posted about the conflicting reports about China’s compliance with the new sanctions on North Korea. Just after I posted that, I noticed that the Daily NK had also added a report of its own, suggesting that amid a regime mobilization to expand coal production, coal exports were being refused by Chinese ports. “Recently, we’ve seen a full ban on our [North Korean] ships at the Port of Yingkou in Liaoning Province, where coal trade had been most...
Categories China & Korea/Sanctions
March 24, 2016

China’s reaction to North Korea shipping sanctions shows strain, confusion

Two weeks ago, I surveyed the evidence of China’s compliance with new U.N. sanctions and found  “mixed, yet hopeful signs.” One area in which the signs has seemed especially hopeful was the enforcement of shipping sanctions. The Philippines had already seized one designated ship, the Sierra Leone-flagged M/V Jin Teng, and detained another, the non-designated, North Korean-crewed, Tuvalu-flagged tanker M/V Theresa Begonia. There was also some evidence that Chinese ports were complying, but we’ll get to that later.  Under the...
Categories China/Diplomacy/Sanctions
March 21, 2016

China & Russia alarmed about secondary sanctions, because sanctions never work.

After years of extensive, flagrant, and well-documented violations of U.N. sanctions against North Korea, China is finally reaping the consequences. Americans don’t agree on much anymore, but Beijing’s cheating has achieved a political impossibility — it has united 418 representatives, 96 senators, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the mainstream of North Korea watchers in support of secondary sanctions on the (mostly Chinese) banks and businesses that are propping up Kim Jong-un financially. That policy is now expressed in law, and the...
Categories China/Diplomacy/Russia/Sanctions
March 15, 2016

HSBC freezes “at least” $87M in assets of North Korea-linked Chinese tycoon

You all remember Sam Pa, right? He’s the Chinese ex-spy with a history of dubious business dealings in Africa, for which he was eventually sanctioned by the Treasury Department. Pa’s 88 Queensway group also had dealings with Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation, a financial arm of North Korea’s Bureau 39, for which he was not designated. Today, this happened: HSBC has frozen more than $87m in accounts linked to a Chinese tycoon behind several multibillion-dollar deals in Africa, while it investigates allegations of...
Categories China & Korea/Money Laundering
March 9, 2016

N. Korea sanctions are failing because of China. That’s why we need secondary sanctions.

Last November, I put up a post cataloging China’s long and deep history of breaking U.N. sanctions against North Korea. The post, which relied heavily on reports of the U.N. Panel of Experts monitoring North Korea sanctions, attracted a great deal of attention, including from Senate staff as they considered the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act. The new POE report, released yesterday, is almost 300 pages long (including exhibits) and has more than enough material to make a rich...
Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions