North Korea last year shipped coal to Russia that was then delivered to South Korea and Japan in a likely violation of UN sanctions, three western European intelligence sources said.
The UN Security Council on Aug. 5 last year banned North Korean exports of coal under sanctions intended to cut off an important source of the foreign currency Pyongyang needs to fund its nuclear weapon and long-range missile programs.
However, the secretive communist state has since then at least three times shipped coal to the Russian ports of Nakhodka and Kholmsk, where it was unloaded at docks and reloaded onto ships that took it to South Korea or Japan, the sources said.
A Western shipping source said separately that some of the cargoes reached Japan and South Korea in October last year.
A US security source also confirmed the coal trade via Russia and said it was continuing.
“Russia’s port of Nakhodka is becoming a transshipping hub for North Korean coal,” said one of the European security sources, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of international diplomacy around North Korea.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment sent on Thursday last week.
Russia’s mission to the UN informed the Security Council sanctions committee on Nov. 3 last year that Moscow was complying with the sanctions.
Two lawyers who specialize in sanctions law told reporters it appeared the transactions violated UN sanctions.
The US Department of the Treasury on Wednesday put the owner of one of the ships, the Ji Bong 6, under sanctions for delivering North Korean coal to Kholmsk on Sept. 5 last year.
It imposed sanctions on nine entities, 16 people and six North Korean ships it accused of helping the weapons programs.
North Korean coal exports were initially capped under a 2016 Security Council resolution that required countries to report monthly imports of coal from North Korea to the council’s sanctions committee within 30 days of the end of each month.
Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russia had not reported any imports of North Korea coal to the committee last year.
The sanctions committee in November last year told UN member states that a violation occurs when “activities or transactions proscribed by Security Council resolutions are undertaken or attempts are made to engage in proscribed transactions, whether or not the transaction has been completed.”
Asked about the shipments, a US Department of State spokesman said: “It’s clear that Russia needs to do more. All UN member states, including Russia, are required to implement sanctions resolutions in good faith and we expect them all to do so.”
An independent panel of experts that reports to the Security Council on violations of sanctions was not immediately available for comment.
The panel reported to the Security Council on Sept. 5 that North Korea had been “deliberately using indirect channels to export prohibited commodities, evading sanctions.”
Two separate routes for the coal were identified by the Western security sources.
The first used vessels from North Korea via Nakhodka, about 85km east of the Russian city of Vladivostok.
The second route took coal via Kholmsk on the Russian Pacific island of Sakhalin, north of Japan.
The coal did not pass Russian customs because of the UN sanctions taking effect, but was then loaded onto vessels operated by Chinese firms.
Those vessels stated their destination in Russian port control documents as North Korea, said a source in the Sakhalin port administration who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Port control documents stated the destination of the coal as North Korea. However, the vessels that loaded the North Korean coal sailed instead for the ports of Pohang and Incheon in South Korea, ship tracking data showed.
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