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UN Sanctions Aren’t Keeping Snowmobiles and Booze Out of North Korea

A recent Security Council report provides a glimpse into how economic and military sanctions against rogue regimes often don’t work well.
Photo by John Pavelka

Now that landslide election results have reconfirmed Kim Jong-un’s wholly legitimate and democratic mandate over North Korea, the Supreme Leader and his underlings can get back to the busy work of evading international sanctions.

A recent United Nations report assessing the effectiveness of sanctions against North Korea has found that the country is bypassing embargoes intended to prevent it from trading weapons and technology. It also details how sanctions against the importation of luxury items into the Hermit Kingdom are poorly coordinated among member countries.

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For example, Switzerland prevented North Korea’s attempted purchase of ski lifts worth nearly $8 million for its controversial Masikryong ski resort by including “equipment for sports facilities with luxury character” in its embargo, but a Chinese company fulfilled the order because the lifts weren’t technically classified as luxury items in the Security Council’s most recent resolution of sanctions. The report referred to photographs of European snow groomers, Canadian snowmobiles, and other high-end equipment at the resort.

The sanctions on luxuries are meant to target North Korea’s elite while sparing the majority of its subjects, who have endured destitution, famines, and continuous human-rights abuses. The absence of an exhaustive list of prohibited goods complicates the international application of the ban, however.

The findings provide a glimpse into how economic and military sanctions against rogue regimes often don’t work well.

Bryan Early, a political scientist specializing in sanctions and proliferation issues at the the State University of New York at Albany, told VICE News that UN members are supposed to respect the restrictions on selling arms and luxuries to North Korea — but the Security Council has only eight experts to make sure they’re doing so.

“North Korea has all the advantages,” he said.

Even before the UN imposed harsh sanctions against North Korea in 2006 after its first nuclear test, Pyongyang employed an international network of arms dealers, shipping companies, and embassy staffers to obtain and sell arms and goods. After the UN strengthened sanctions last year in response to additional tests, this network employed “techniques pioneered by drug-trafficking organizations” to transport contraband, according to the report.

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Last year, Panamanian authorities found two disassembled Soviet-era MiG fighter jets and other arms under 200,000 sacks of sugar in the hold of the Chong Chon Gang, a North Korean freighter returning home from Cuba. The UN report includes a message from an official at a North Korean shipping company to the ship’s captain, instructing him to “load the containers first and load the 10,000 tons of sugar (at the next Port) over them so that the containers cannot be seen.”

The report suggests that North Korean weapons and ammunition are turning up in places like Somalia and Iran, and noted the acquisition of a $7 million yacht from the UK. The website NK News reported last summer that Kim Jong-un had used the yacht to navigate a tour of the country's east coast.

The report also cites two recent visits by former basketball star Dennis Rodman to the country — one in December 2013 that was sponsored by the Irish gambling site Paddy Power, and another made this past January in the company of other former NBA players. The report suspects that Rodman and his party violated sanctions based on media reports that they brought with them “five bottles of vodka (United States)… one bottle of whiskey (Ireland), two whiskey glasses and one whiskey decanter (Ireland).” (There's no word yet on whether these items were for Rodman’s personal use.)

While most North Koreans contend with starvation, the UN disclosed earlier this year that the Supreme Leader shelled out some $646 million on luxury goodies in 2012 — more than double the amount that his father Kim Jong-il would typically spend.

Even if the embargo against luxuries worked well, Early mused, he didn’t think it would change much.

“If you have to forget about the finest perfumes and the most sophisticated Cognacs when you feel you are entitled to privileged rule, that can make you upset,” said Early. “But it’s not going to cause you to undergo deep changes to your foreign policy or flip direction on your ballistic missile programs.”

Follow John Dyer on Twitter: @johnjdyerjr

Photo via Flickr