The latest report released by the United Nations Panel of Experts on North Korea (or Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPRK) details cases of proven or alleged sanctions violations of the UN Security Council resolutions on North Korea between 2 February 2019 and 7 February 2020.
The Security Council resolutions have been put in place to prevent and deter countries from assisting North Korea’s procurement of equipment for its sanctioned WMD and ballistic missile programmes. However, the Panel’s report makes it clear that both new and long-standing sanctions evasion techniques continue to be used to hide related illicit activity, alongside an increase in direct maritime trade of sanctioned commodities.
Over the course of this one year period the Panel reported over 250 alleged violations, involving 62 countries
The sanctions violations were broken down into five major categories: military-related, business and financial-related (including the employment of North Korean workers), DPRK procurement-related (sellings goods), import-related (buying goods), and shipping-related (the provision of transportation and related services). Faced with global port bans, North Korea relies on complicit foreign-flagged vessels to transport illicit cargo, like undeclared petroleum, to their ports, using illegal ship-to-ship transfers and other techniques to avoid detection. Consequently, 17 countries were found to be responsible for such shipping-related violations, up from 14 countries in 2018-19.