North Korean Economy Watch

According to the Wall Street Journal:

That’s a headline we never expected to write—especially in the context of the United Nations Development Program’s scandal-ridden operations in North Korea. In 2007, the U.S. mission to the U.N. shined a light on the U.N. agency’s record of gross mismanagement while operating in that rogue dictatorship, including large sums of money that vanished after being transferred to Pyongyang and dual-use technology shipped to the North without U.S. export licenses.

These abuses came to light thanks in part to a whistleblower by the name of Artjon Shkurtaj, an Albanian-born accountant who served as chief of operations for all U.N. operations in North Korea in the mid-2000s. Mr. Shkurtaj was outraged at the violations he saw and after two years of trying to get his superiors at UNDP headquarters in New York to take corrective action, he took his information to the U.S. mission to the U.N.

The UNDP responded by firing him and taking every opportunity to malign his integrity. When Mr. Shkurtaj complained, a UNDP-sponsored investigation found that his firing had not been in retaliation for blowing the whistle. What a surprise. The U.N. bureaucracy and its diplomatic coterie also circled the wagons and attacked the U.S. mission for daring to raise the subject.

Now, more than three years later, Mr. Shkurtaj has been substantially vindicated. On Tuesday the U.N. Dispute Tribunal ordered the UNDP to pay its former employee $166,000 in compensation for its failure to give Mr. Shkurtaj the opportunity to respond to its adverse findings against him. Judge Memooda Ebrahim-Carstens ruled that the UNDP violated Mr. Shkurtaj’s “due process rights, damaged his career prospects and professional reputation, and caused him emotional distress.” She let stand the UNDP’s finding that the firing had not been retaliatory.

Beyond Mr. Shkurtaj’s case, the judge’s 24-page opinion is worth reading for its inside look at the imperious manner in which the U.N. bureaucracy operates. The infighting and buck-passing are world-class—even in the office of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who presents himself as a reformer. The ruling in Mr. Shkurtaj’s case suggests that the Dispute Tribunal, established a little over a year ago, is serious about its mandate to be “independent, professionalized, expedient, transparent and decentralized.” The panel has already clashed with Mr. Ban’s office over other rulings.

The finding also vindicates Mark Wallace, the U.S. official who led the charge for transparency at UNDP despite hostility from the media and from Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, and with very little support at the State Department.

At yesterday’s daily press briefing, a spokesperson said that the U.N. is “studying” the panel’s latest decision. It’s possible the Secretary-General will decide to appeal. If Mr. Ban were truly serious about cleaning up his own house, he would write Mr. Shkurtaj a letter of apology, thank him for having the courage to alert the U.N. to instances of wrong-doing, and give him his job back.

Past posts which reference the UNDP can be found here. 

Read the full story here:
Hooray for the U.N.
Wall Street Jounral
9/2/2010

According to Fox News:

As the xenophobic North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il appears to be inching toward a murky transition of power, the United Nations is laying plans to spend more than $290 million on a welter of programs in the communist state—including a scheme to produce an algae sold in the U.S. as tropical fish food–provided someone else comes up with much of the money.

The money is by no means a sure thing, especially if the unpredictable North Korean dictator rejects any of the stringent oversight conditions attached to money from some of the important donors the U.N. hopes will chip in.

The U.N. plans, however, demonstrate the determination of the world organization and its most influential backers—notably, the U.S. government, which is the biggest single financial supporter of most U.N. aid and development organizations– to keep dangling carrots of assistance before the North Korean regime, even at its most provocative.

The U.N. plans persist despite such incidents as the March 26 sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, most likely by a North Korean submarine, and the regime’s continued nuclear saber-rattling, especially toward South Korea. Just last month, for example, North Korea threatened a “powerful nuclear deterrence” in response to a joint U.S.-South Korean antisubmarine exercise prompted by the Cheonan incident.

All those uncertainties fade, however, alongside a bigger one: rumors that the ailing and reclusive Kim, who returned on Sunday from his second trip to China in three months, hopes to install his youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, as his successor– a process that could already be well under way.

Whatever the outcome of the succession process, at least a dozen U.N. agencies and offices clearly hope to be deeply involved over the next five years in North Korea’s national welfare, in areas ranging from health care and education to sanitation and civil service training, “strengthening knowledge networks” in agriculture, alternate energy development, and transportation, not to mention improving North Korean export trade.

A significant number of the efforts will also go to bolstering the capabilities of the North Korean government, which is not surprising, since they are prepared in close collaboration with various departments of the ruling apparatus. These efforts include a strong focus on health care delivery and education (already problematic in a totalitarian state burdened with a smothering cult of the personality).

But they also include more ambiguous activities in a brutal and thorough-going dictatorship such as North Korea. Among them: coordinating “national knowledge networks and practices,” “management and specialist training,” and—in a country that regularly threatens its neighbors with nuclear and conventional war—a “disaster preparedness and response strategy” spurred by North Korea’s famines and floods. All of these activities are depicted by the U.N. documents as being strictly humanitarian in nature.

The array of plans is laid out in schematic form in a 22-page “United Nations Strategic Framework Results Matrix” for North Korea, which is being presented to members of the supervisory Executive Board of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the U.N.’s principal development coordinating agency, at a meeting in New York this week.

Click here for the matrix.

The framework is buttressed by UNDP’s own country program for North Korea, which is a $38.3 million portion of the larger total. Both documents cover the period from 2011 to 2015.

Click here for the UNDP Country Program.

The UNDP contribution is noteworthy, among other things, for the fact that most of the money–$34 million—can be counted on to exist. That amount is described in the annex to the country program as coming from “regular” UNDP resources, meaning its core budget. Only $4 million of UNDP’s spending in North Korea comes from other contributions.

A UNDP spokesman underlined—as does the country program—the extent to which UNDP claims to be adhering to newly strengthened safeguards in relation to its North Korean program.

UNDP activities in North Korea exploded into scandal in 2007, leading to suspension of its program until 2009. Among other things, an independent investigative panel subsequently determined that UNDP had wrongfully provided millions in hard currency to the North Korean regime, ignored U.N. Security Council sanctions in passing on dual-use equipment that could conceivably be used in the country’s nuclear program, and allowed North Korean government employees to fill key positions.

In the current program, UNDP emphasizes that it has revamped its hiring and currency policies, but adds that “a proper monitoring and evaluation plan is necessary to ensure accountability and transparency in project implementation.” The careful wording indicates that at least some of that planning remains to be done.

While UNDP has actual cash to spend, however, nearly $119 million of some $128 million that UNICEF plans to spend in North Korea over the next four years—about 93 per cent—is expected to come from outside donors, according to UNICEF’s own country plan for North Korea. That is, as UNICEF delicately puts it, “subject to the availability of specific purpose contributions” from those willing to put up the money.

Click here for the UNICEF Country Program.

Much of that volunteer UNICEF money would go toward building up North Korea’s grievously neglected clinical health care facilities, bolstering maternal and early childhood care, early childhood education and large-scale vaccination and medication campaigns to fight AIDs, malaria and tuberculosis.

Most of the anti-disease money is supposed to come from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), a Geneva-based institution financed in part of Microsoft Found Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda. Nowadays, the U.S. government contributes 28 percent of the GFATM’s funds.

And so far, GFATM has only handed over $12.45 million to UNICEF, according to the U.N. agency’s spokesman, Chris de Bono, for its anti-malarial and TV campaign. (According to GFATM’s website, UNICEF has received $18.35 million, out of about $31.5 million approved so far.) According to de Bono, another $56 million is due to come from GFATM starting in 2013, provided a “number of conditions” laid down by the Global Fund are met.

Those conditions, according to Global Fund communications director Jon Liden, largely bear on whether the money is meaning the health goals set by the donors. Among them, for example, is a commitment to cut in half the North Korean death rate from malaria by 2013, using the death rate in 2007 as a baseline (0.31 per 1,000 people, vs. 0.62.).

Click here for Global Fund report on North Korea.

Failure to meet the targets could result in reduced funding for the next three years, or a cutoff.

The additional “other” revenues required by UNICEF for 2011-2015 will be raised “as we get into our program,” according to spokesman De Bono, “as is our usual practice.”

The same apparently applies to the bulk of $101 million or so to be spent in North Korea by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO activities include supporting UNICEF on the malaria and TB campaigns, but also building up North Korean health care, supplying equipment and drugs, and helping institute telemedicine.

But WHO’s own “country cooperation strategy” for North Korea extends only to 2013, meaning all of its fundraising plans for the 2011-2015 have not yet been written.

In the current strategy document, completed in 2009, WHO notes that it will need to use about $3 million of its regular budget and mobilize $20 million annually from voluntary contributions to meet North Koreas needs. This, the document says, “will be a challenging task.”

Just how challenging, perhaps, can be seen in the case of the struggling World Food Program (WFP), whose efforts are outlined in the U.N. Strategic Framework as trying to provide “fortified locally produced nutritious foods” to young children.

In fact, WFP has been running a dwindling operation to provide emergency food to many more of North Korea’s desperately hungry population. But donors stampeded away from the WFP fundraising effort, especially after the Kim regime detonated a nuclear device last year, and questions were raised about whether the government was profiting from the food effort.

Questioned Raised About Who Profits From Aid to North Korea

Currently, WFP has dialed back the goal of its emergency food aid operation from $500 million in 2008-2009 to $91 million.

In the 2011-2015 strategic framework, UNDP and the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization will be working on amplifying North Korea’s meager food supply, enhancing, among other things, areas where “double-cropping” is possible, and adding to fruit orchards and livestock herds. UNDP’s project documents say it will spend $13 million on “seed production in alternative cereals” –defined as wheat, barley, soybeans, potatoes—as well as “wild fruit processing and protein-rich production.”

Some of UNDP’s protein projects, however, seem decidedly outside the mainstream, or even bizarre. In its program document, for example, UNDP says it will “support pilot production of protein-rich plans, such as spirulina and pistia statiotes, which will supply nutrients.”

Spirulina is an algae that has gained a reputation in alternative food circles as a diet supplement. In the U.S., health food websites offer a powdered form for anywhere from $24 to $33 per pound—hardly a cheap source of protein for starving people. It is also sold in the U.S. as tropical fish food. But whether North Korea needs a “pilot project” to produce spirulina is debatable.

As far back as October, 2003, a North Korean news agency declared that the Kim government’s botanical institute had, “after years of researches [sic] completed the method of artificially cultivating spirulina at low cost.” The agency added, “It can be cultivated easily in greenhouses too.” Indeed, spirulina is currently listed as a marketable product on a North Korean export website. And on Aug. 6, a Chinese news agency announced that North Korean researchers had created a new spirulina vaccination “which prevents and treats domestic animals’ diseases and increases their weight.” Whether there was any independent verification of that claim was not mentioned in the news article.

As for pistia statiotes, also known as water lettuce, according to the website of the Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants at the University of Florida, the floating plant is a fast-growing weed, which can block waterways, deplete oxygen supplies in water, and threaten fish populations. It is described as an obnoxious invader in West Africa and Australia. While pistia can survive in temperate climates, it abhors cold and thrives mainly in tropical and semi-tropical environments—not exactly what North Korea is known for.

One of the few places where it is cultivated for its nutritional value is apparently southern China, where it is sometimes used as a supplemental carp food.

In a country full of starving or semi-starving people, of course, almost anything may be viewed as edible. But in the U.N.’s renewed desire to pour money into North Korea, the value of at least some of the projects it is pushing for approval may be hard to swallow.

Read the full story here:
U.N. Lays Plans to Spend $290M on Aid to North Korea
Fox News
George Russell
9/1/2010

According to the AFP:

North Korea is forging trade documents and changing the names of its trading firms to try to dodge international sanctions, a Seoul intelligence official and a media report said Wednesday.

Pyongyang changed the name of the Korea Mining and Development Corp to Kapmun Tosong Trade after the UN Security Council blacklisted the firm following the North’s missile test in April 2009, Dong-A Ilbo newspaper reported.

The communist state also renamed weapons trader Tangun Trade as Chasongdang Trade when the company was put on the sanctions list after the North’s second nuclear test in May 2009.

The tests prompted the Security Council to impose tougher sanctions targeting Pyongyang’s weapons exports and blacklisting companies suspected of such dealings.

The sanctions also called on UN member states to inspect ships and planes suspected of carrying banned cargo to or from the North.

Since then, the North has mostly used China to transport its arms exports, Dong-A said.

It had forged trade invoices on military products, for instance by labelling torpedoes as fish processing equipment and anti-tank rockets as oil boring machinery, the paper added.

A spokesman for Seoul’s National Intelligence Service confirmed the report but declined to give details.

“Intelligence authorities in South Korea and the United States are trying to crack down on the North’s forging of company names and export invoices, but it is becoming increasingly difficult since the North keeps coming up with new schemes,” the paper quoted one South Korean official as saying.

The impoverished North faces multiple sanctions imposed by the UN and the United States and targeting its illegal trade in arms, drugs and luxury goods.

The US Treasury Department announced Monday it was imposing sanctions on four people and eight organisations accused of aiding the communist government through illicit trade.

Of course these games are nothing new. About this time last year DPRK sanctions enforcement was in the news.  Marcus Noland referred to the task as “Whac-a-mole”.

Read the full stories here:
N.Korea forges trade documents to dodge sanctions
AFP
9/1/2010

N. Korea Fakes Trade Documents to Export WMDs 
Donga Ilbo
9/1/2010

According to Medical News Today:

In a country where good news is scarce, a pioneering agroforestry project in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is restoring heavily degraded landscapes and providing much-needed food for communities living on the sloping lands.

Jianchu Xu, East-Asia Coordinator for the World Agroforestry Centre, which has been providing technical expertise and training for the project since 2008, said agroforestry – in this case the growing of trees on sloping land – is uniquely suited to DPR Korea for addressing food security and protecting the environment.

“What we have managed to achieve so far has had a dramatic impact on people’s lives and the local environment,” Jianchu explains.

“Previously malnourished communities are now producing their own trees and growing chestnut, walnut, peaches, pears and other fruits and berries as well as medicinal bushes,” Jianchu explains. “They have more food and vitamins and are earning income through trading”.

Following the collapse of the socialist bloc in 1989 and a lack of subsidies for agriculture in DPR Korea, famine and malnutrition became widespread in rural areas.

DPR Korea is a harsh mountainous country where only 16% of the land area is suitable for cultivation. In desperation in the 1990s, people turned to the marginal sloping lands but this had a price: deforestation for cropping land and fuelwood left entire landscapes denuded and depleted of nutrients.

In an effort to reverse the situation, an innovative and pioneering project began in 2002 involving the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and Korea’s Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection. The World Agroforestry Centre was later brought in to provide technical advice.

Suan County has since expanded to 65 user groups in seven counties, with several hundred hectares of sloping land now under sustainable management. And the project is still growing.

A system of establishing user groups with one representative from each family has enabled demonstration plots to be set up and a large number of households to benefit from knowledge about growing multi-purpose trees. Such trees can improve and stabilize soils as well as provide fertilizer, fodder or fruits.

Most of the people farming the sloping lands are pension workers with little agricultural experience. The agroforestry systems they are now implementing and the techniques they have learnt are significantly increasing tree cover on the slopes as well giving them a diversity of crops.

Several of the user groups have started their own nurseries so that they can be self-sufficient and produce their own planting materials.

Initially a European consultant was engaged to provide advice on sloping land management, but in 2008 SDC brought the World Agroforestry Centre’s China office into the project.

“With similar experiences and history, our Chinese staff were well-placed to work in DPR Korea,” explains Jianchu. “It was important to have people with an understanding of the technical, institutional and socio-political context.”

There are very few international organizations operating in DPR Korea, and most of these are providing emergency relief. “With our strong focus on capacity development, we have established a good reputation,” adds Jianchu. So much so that the Centre is now negotiating a memorandum of understanding with the government and there are plans to establish an office in the country.

According to Jianchu, one of the most important aspects to ensuring the project is sustained is capacity development at all levels.

“As well as the user groups, we are providing training to multi-disciplinary working groups comprising representatives from the national academy, agricultural universities, forestry research and planning institutes, and staff of the Ministry.”

“There is an enormous need to improve knowledge and skills in DPR Korea in the area of natural resource management and to nurture young scientists,” says Jianchu. SDC is now investing in this area. Each year over the past few years, a handful of students from DPR Korea have undertaken studies with the Center for Mountain Ecosystem Studies, jointly run by the World Agroforestry Centre and the Chinese Academy of Sciences and hosted by the Kunming Institute of Botany in China. Some could be considered for a doctoral program in the future.

To further support the up-skilling of DPR Korea scientists and the up-scaling of agroforestry, the Centre will soon publish an agroforestry manual. Work is also underway on an agroforestry policy for sloping lands management and an agroforestry inventory.

Read the full story here:
Agroforestry A Success In North Korea
Medical News Today
Kate Langford
8/31/2010

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 10-08-31-1
8/31/2010

An organization representing several major South Korean religious organizations crossed the DMZ on August 27 to deliver over 300 tons (thirteen 25-ton trucks) of flour to the city of Kaesong, with plans to distribute the aid to North Korea’s children and poverty-stricken. This is the first overland delivery of aid since Seoul’s May 24 measures restricting exchanges in response to the Cheonan incident.

Nine members of the organization, representing Buddhism, Catholicism, and Protestantism, travelled to the North. The group intends to visit one or two nurseries, and distribute flour to Kaesong City as well as Jangpung, Keumchon, Daechon, Chongdan and Yondan districts. The delegation is also delivering six boxes of nutrition supplements for children in Kaesong’s nurseries. Before crossing over into North Korea, the group held a press conference in Paju City’s Imjin Park. At the conference, a representative stated that while the aid shipment was later than desired, the organization thanked the South Korean government for making the decision to allow the delivery while facing a difficult situation in the aftermath of the Cheonan incident.

The organization also stated, “Peninsular denuclearization is also important for bringing peace and security to the Korean Peninsula,” but it is necessary to make ensuring the lives of those in both North and South Korea a top priority, and the group “earnestly hopes that the [South Korean] governments’ active support of humanitarian assistance can save the lives of North Korean residents and help to realize inter-Korean reconciliation and peace.”

The organization also stressed that religious teachings emphasized the need to exert all efforts for the desolate and the starving. The group is devoted to helping resolve the North Korean plight caused by starvation and malnutrition, and through these efforts, bringing about peace on the Korean peninsula. The organization, representing those of Jewish, Catholic, Buddhist, Protestant, Korean Buddhist, and Chongdo religions, as well as the United Religions Initiative of Korea, continues to pursue renewed government assistance to North Korea.

The Korean Conference of Religion and Peace (KCRP) issued a statement on August 27 declaring that the South Korean government needed to send aid to the North not only in response to the critical situation caused by recent flooding, but in order to help resolve the chronic food shortages causing ongoing hardship for the people of North Korea. In highlighting the plight of North Koreans, the group emphasizes familial and national ties, stressing Korean unity in calling for government assistance for ‘brethren’ in the North. The group also calls for both Seoul and Pyongyang to “open [their] hearts and hold talks on peninsular peace and unification” rather than continue with the current confrontational policies.

According to the Cuban News Agency:

The stamp shows a picture of Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro next to then North Korean president Kim II Sung during a visit of Fidel to North Korea in 1986. The two leaders are holding their hands up united, reported Granma newspaper.

During the presentation ceremony at the Cuban Stamp Museum, the ambassador of the Asian country to Cuba, Kwon Sung Chol, extolled the willingness of the people of both countries to continue building socialism in spite of the hostility of the United States.

Kwon reaffirmed Pyongyang’s unconditional support of Cuba in the face of the economic, financial and commercial blockade of the US against the island and for the release of the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters imprisoned in that country for nearly 12 years now.

Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez were arrested in September, 1998, while they were monitoring Florida-based anti-Cuba terrorist organizations.

 
Read the full story here:
Cuba and North Korea Launch Stamp Marking 50 Years of Relations
Cuban News Agency
8/31/2010

A few weeks ago I posted images of a secret Myanmar delegation visit to the DPRK. I was unsure the location of the “Model Command Post” (Command Control System and National Air Defense Command System – PLUTO – 4S), however an anonymous reader located a facility that is consistent with the picture taken by the Myanmar delegation:

The facility is located at 39° 3’0.86″N, 125°45’51.57″E between the Pyongyang television tower and the May Day Stadium.  Satellite imagery reveals the facility is relatively new.  As of October 2005, construction on the building had not begun.

Another reader also located the position of KPA unit 681.   According to KCNA:

(Feb 11, 2009) General Secretary Kim Jong Il inspected Unit No. 681 under the KPA Artillery Command and watched its firing exercise.

He was greeted on the spot by Col. General Ri Jong Bu, KPA Artillery commander, and other general officers and commanding officers of the unit.

He acquainted himself with the unit’s performance of duty. Then he mounted an observation platform where he was briefed on the plan for the exercise by the artillery commander and watched it.

The one-match-for-a-hundred artillerymen’s exercise clearly showed the resolute determination of the servicemen to crush the aggressors at a single blow when they dare intrude into the DPRK even 0.001mm and their merciless striking capability.

After watching the exercise conducted by the brave servicemen firmly armed with the ever-victorious Juche-based war methods, he expressed great satisfaction over the fact that all the servicemen are fully prepared politically and ideologically and in military technique to beat back any enemy’s surprise invasion in time and defend the socialist homeland like an impregnable fortress.

He highly estimated their successful exercise and set forth important tasks which would serve as guidelines for further developing the KPA into invincible revolutionary armed forces.

The KPA, a successor to the brilliant traditions of the anti-Japanese war, has grown not only to be an army strong in ideology as it regards the spirit of devotedly defending the leader, the spirit of becoming human bullets and bombs as unshakable faith but to be powerful revolutionary armed forces equipped with modern offensive and defensive means enough to wipe out the enemies at a single blow no matter from which part of the earth they come to invade the DPRK, he said, adding: The socialist homeland is impregnable and its cause of building a great prosperous powerful nation is firmly guaranteed as its defence line is guarded by this invincible army, which has grown strong in the protracted and arduous struggle.

He met the servicemen who took part in the exercise and warmly encouraged them, before having a photo session with them.

He was accompanied by KPA Vice Marshal Kim Yong Chun, minister of the People’s Armed Forces of the NDC of the DPRK, KPA General Ri Yong Ho, chief of the KPA General Staff, KPA General Kim Jong Gak, first vice-director of the KPA General Political Bureau, and KPA Generals Hyon Chol Hae, Kim Myong Guk and Ri Myong Su and other commanding officers of the army and Kim Ki Nam, secretary of the WPK Central Committee, and Jang Song Thaek, Pak Nam Gi and Kim Yang Gon, department directors of the C.C., the WPK, and other senior officials of the society.

By comparing satellite imagery with images captured from the ground, it appears that the unit is based near the Wonsan AFB runway:

Or maybe they just want us to think it is there!

Anyway, a big thanks to those readers for their time.

I can’t say enough about the benefits of crowd sourcing.  This is how we located the DPRK’s Reconnaissance Bureau some time ago.

UPDATE 4: The following statement appeared on the Treasury Department web page:

In joint actions, the U.S. Departments of Treasury and State today announced the designations of five North Korean entities and three individuals under Executive Order (E.O.) 13382 for supporting North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program. Executive Order 13382 is an authority aimed at freezing the assets of WMD proliferators and their supporters thereby isolating them from the U.S. financial and commercial systems.

Also today, President Obama signed an Executive Order that directs the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to target for sanctions individuals and entities facilitating North Korean trafficking in arms and related materiel; procurement of luxury goods; and engagement in illicit activities, including money laundering, the counterfeiting of goods and currency, bulk cash smuggling and narcotics trafficking. The new Executive Order supplements E.O 13382, under which North Korean entities have been designated to date, and is consistent with measures required in UNSCRs 1718 and 1874.

The following individuals have been added to OFAC’s SDN list:

KIM, Yong Chol (a.k.a. KIM, Yong-Chol; a.k.a. KIM, Young-Cheol; a.k.a. KIM, Young-Chol; a.k.a. KIM, Young-Chul); DOB circa 1947; alt. DOB circa 1946; POB Pyongan-Pukto, North Korea (individual) [DPRK]

RI, Hong-Sop, c/o General Bureau of Atomic Energy , Haeudong, Pyongchen District, Pyongyang, Korea, North; DOB 1940; nationality Korea, North (individual) [NPWMD]

RI, Je-Son (a.k.a. RI, Che-Son), c/o General Bureau of Atomic Energy, Haeudong, Pyongchen District, Pyongyang, Korea, North; DOB 1938; nationality Korea, North (individual) [NPWMD]

YUN, Ho-Jin (a.k.a. YUN, Ho-Chin), c/o Namchongang Trading Corporation, Pyongyang, Korea, North; DOB 13 Oct 1944; nationality Korea, North (individual) [NPWMD]

The following entities have been added to OFAC’s SDN list:

GREEN PINE ASSOCIATED CORPORATION (a.k.a. CHONGSONG YONHAP; a.k.a. CH’O’NGSONG YO’NHAP), Nungrado, Pyongyang, Korea, North; c/o Reconnaissance General Bureau Headquarters, Hyongjesan-Guyok, Pyongyang, Korea, North [DPRK]

KOREA HEUNGJIN TRADING COMPANY (a.k.a. HUNJIN TRADING CO.), Pyongyang, Korea, North [NPWMD]

KOREA TAESONG TRADING COMPANY, Pyongyang, Korea, North [NPWMD]

MUNITIONS INDUSTRY DEPARTMENT (a.k.a. MILITARY SUPPLIES INDUSTRY DEPARTMENT), Pyongyang, Korea,
North [NPWMD]

OFFICE 39 (a.k.a. BUREAU 39; a.k.a. CENTRAL COMMITTEE BUREAU 39; a.k.a. DIVISION 39; a.k.a. OFFICE #39; a.k.a. OFFICE NO. 39; a.k.a. THIRD FLOOR), Second KWP Government Building (Korean – Ch’o’ngsa), Chungso’ng, Urban Town (Korean – Dong), Chung Ward, Pyongyang, Korea, North; Chung-Guyok (Central District), Sosong Street, Kyongrim-Dong, Pyongyang, Korea, North; Changgwang Street, Pyongyang, Korea, North [DPRK]

RECONNAISSANCE GENERAL BUREAU (a.k.a. CHONGCH’AL CH’ONGGUK; a.k.a. KPA UNIT 586; a.k.a. “RGB”), Hyongjesan-Guyok, Pyongyang, Korea, North; Nungrado, Pyongyang, Korea, North [DPRK]

SECOND ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES (a.k.a. 2ND ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES; a.k.a. ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES; a.k.a. CHAYON KWAHAK-WON; a.k.a. CHE 2 CHAYON KWAHAK-WON; a.k.a. KUKPANG KWAHAK-WON; a.k.a. NATIONAL DEFENSE ACADEMY; a.k.a. SANSRI; a.k.a. SECOND ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES RESEARCH INSTITUTE), Pyongyang, Korea, North [NPWMD]

SECOND ECONOMIC COMMITTEE, Kangdong, Korea, North [NPWMD]

UPDATE 3: According to the Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration outlined new financial sanctions on North Korea aimed at further choking off Pyongyang’s arms trade and the illicit businesses funding dictator Kim Jong Il’s government.

The U.S. specifically targeted a secretive unit of Pyongyang’s ruling Korean Workers’ Party, known as Office 39, which American officials believe serves as a private slush fund for Mr. Kim.

Washington also blacklisted nearly a dozen North Korean individuals and entities alleged to be overseeing Pyongyang’s development of conventional arms and weapons of mass destruction, as well as their sales to third countries.

Among those designated are the Second Economic Committee of the Workers’ Party and Yun Ho-jin, Pyongyang’s onetime ambassador to the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. The U.S. also named to its sanctions list two top officials from Pyongyang’s General Bureau of Atomic Energy, Ri Je-son and Ri Hong-sop.

“When it comes to focusing on illicit activity, we have seen that the world reacts to this kind of thing very, very positively,” said Stuart Levey, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. “We believe that this sort of program can have a very powerful impact.”

The new U.S. measures freeze any assets of the designated persons or entities inside the U.S. and bars American companies from conducting business with the listed North Koreans. Mr. Levey also said that any foreign entities conducting business with the sanctioned North Koreans could also face U.S. penalties.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in June that the U.S. would enact new financial penalties on Pyongyang, in part, in response to the North’s alleged torpedoing of a South Korean naval vessel. The March sinking of the Cheonan killed 46 South Korean servicemen and has led to heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula.

U.S. officials fear the attack could be linked to a political succession process inside Pyongyang and could presage other provocative acts by the North. U.S. and Asian officials believe Kim Jong Il is seeking to pass power to his third son, Kim Jong Eun.

…U.S. officials said the targeting of Office 39 is among the most direct assaults on Kim Jong Il’s finances to date and illustrates Washington’s support for the North Korean people. Office 39 has been directly involved in procuring luxury goods for Mr. Kim and Pyongyang’s political elite, even as many North Koreans face starvation.

Office 39 was blacklisted under a new executive order signed by President Barack Obama on Monday that specifically seeks to end North Korea’s ability to raise hard currency through illicit activities like drug smuggling and counterfeit $100 bills. The Treasury said Office 39 was directly involved in a 2009 scheme to illegally export into North Korea two luxury yachts valued at $15 million for Kim Jong Il.

UPDATE 2: According to the Wall Street Journal:

A North Korean arms chief and Pyongyang’s former ambassador to the United Nation’s nuclear agency have emerged as key figures in an intensifying international effort to curb North Korea’s weapons-trading activities.

The global dealings of the two men, Chun Byung-ho and Yun Ho-jin, whom North Korea analysts believe to be related through marriage, date back to the 1980s. They have played leading roles in North Korea’s development and testing of atomic weapons, according to current and former U.S. officials, Asian intelligence analysts and U.N. nonproliferation staffers.

More troubling to officials, Messrs. Chun and Yun also oversee Pyongyang’s vast arms-trading network, which appears to be spreading. They have shipped components for long-range missiles, nuclear reactors and conventional arms to countries including Iran, Syria and Myanmar.

On Monday, the Obama administration announced economic sanctions against various individuals and entities involved in Pyongyang’s nuclear work and in alleged illicit trading activities. The Treasury Department named Mr. Yun and the North Korean body headed by Mr. Chun—the Second Economic Committee of Pyongyang’s ruling Korean Workers’ Party. The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets of those named and bar Americans from conducting business with them. Treasury also warned that foreign firms doing business with them risked sanctions.

The Second Economic Committee oversees a little-known foreign trade office with the Orwellian name of Office 99. The proceeds from the Office’s arms sales go directly to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and Pyongyang’s senior leadership, according to these officials and recent North Korean defectors.

“It is broadly believed that the Second Economic Committee…plays the largest and most prominent role in nuclear, other WMD and missile-related development programs, as well as arranging and conducting arms-related exports” for North Korea, says a report issued in May by the U.N. committee tasked with enforcing international sanctions on Pyongyang.

The U.S. and U.N. recently have intensified efforts to combat the Second Economic Committee and Office 99, alarmed by Pyongyang’s two nuclear-weapons tests and its alleged role in sinking a South Korean naval vessel in March. Last year, the U.N. formally sanctioned Mr. Yun and his arms company, Namchongang Trading Co.

North Korean arms shipments moving through Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa and the South China Sea have been seized or turned back by the U.S. and its allies over the past few years. A Japanese court convicted a Tokyo-based trading company in November of procuring military technologies for Pyongyang with the intent of shipping them to Myanmar.

Still, Messrs. Chun and Yun’s decades of experience in the weapons trade pose a challenge to an international community keen to disrupt Pyongyang’s proliferation activities, say U.S. and Asian officials. “There is no reason to assume that Chun and Yun won’t sell nuclear weapons,” says David Asher, a former Bush administration official who has tracked Pyongyang’s arms trade for a decade. “There needs to be an active effort to disrupt their WMD networks and drive them out of business now, before it’s too late.”

The two men have established a network of front companies in Asia, Europe and the Middle East and have partnered with Southeast Asian, Japanese and Taiwanese criminal syndicates to move cash and contraband, say U.S. officials. And Mr. Yun has used the political cover provided by Pyongyang’s closest ally, China, to openly conduct business in cities such as Beijing and Shenyang, drawing official rebukes from Washington.

North Korean diplomats at Pyongyang’s U.N. mission in New York did not respond to requests for comment. Messrs. Chun and Yun couldn’t be reached.

Current and former U.S. officials say North Korea’s operations resemble in both scale and tactics those of Pakistan’s Abdul Qadeer Khan—one of the most notorious arms dealers in recent years. U.S. officials fear that isolated North Korea, desperate for hard currency, could accelerate its arms exports in a bid to prop up Kim Jong Il’s finances.

Mr. Chun, now 84 years old, and his Second Economic Committee emerged as major global arms exporters in the 1980s, as North Korea shipped as much as $3 billion worth of rockets, pistols and submarines to Tehran during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, say recent defectors and North Korea analysts.

Pyongyang assisted some communist and socialist countries militarily during the 1960s and 1970s, and provided fighter pilots to aid Egypt and Syria in their wars against Israel. But North Korea found a largely captive market in Iran, which faced a U.S.-led weapons embargo as the West threw its support behind Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.

One senior North Korean defector who worked in Pyongyang’s munitions industries says he was dispatched to Iran by the Second Economic Committee in 1987 with the task of constructing missile batteries on the Iranian island of Kish to help Tehran better control the movement of ships through the Straits of Hormuz.

His main interlocutor was Iran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The former hydro-mechanic says camaraderie developed between his 100-man team and the Guard, despite their different backgrounds.

Mr. Chun’s control over the Second Economic Committee was tied to his close relationship with Pyongyang’s ruling Kim family, say defectors and North Korea experts. The Russian-trained bureaucrat served as a member of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung’s bodyguard unit. He rose up the ranks of the Korean Workers’ Party with the political support of Kim Jong Il, eventually securing a position on Pyongyang’s most powerful political body, the National Defense Commission.

North Korea’s high-level defector, Hwang Jang-yop, has identified Mr. Chun as the broker of a key barter trade in the 1990s with Pakistan that significantly advanced Pyongyang’s nuclear infrastructure. The agreement resulted in North Korea shipping parts for long-range missiles to Islamabad in exchange for A.Q. Khan sending centrifuge equipment used in producing nuclear fuel.

As Mr. Chun pushed forward North Korea’s nuclear program from Pyongyang, Mr. Yun, believed to be the husband of Mr. Chun’s second daughter, emerged as a key player in procuring technologies for the Second Economic Committee from Europe, according to U.S., U.N. and European officials.

Mr. Yun, 66, arrived in Vienna in 1985 as Pyongyang’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The English and German speaker led negotiations with the U.N. agency aimed at forging a nuclear-inspection agreement with North Korea, and he helped oversee a 1992 tour of his nation’s Yongbyon nuclear facility for Hans Blix, the IAEA’s then-managing director.

“Yun was dedicated to turning things around. I truly believe that,” says Willi Theis, who worked closely with Mr. Yun as the head of the IAEA’s safeguards unit overseeing North Korea. Mr. Theis is now retired.

Still, concerns grew inside the IAEA about Mr. Yun’s activities, as relations between Pyongyang and the international community deteriorated, according to IAEA officials.

In 1993, North Korea broke off talks with the IAEA over the agency’s demands for an inspection of the country’s nuclear operations, and the U.S. charged Pyongyang with secretly stockpiling plutonium for atomic weapons. The next year, the Clinton administration threatened to bomb the Yongbyon facility if North Korea didn’t explain where the plutonium had gone. Mr. Yun grew embittered with the diplomatic process and mistrustful of the U.S. and its allies, according to IAEA staff and journalists who met with him.

Mr. Theis says he spent hours discussing the process with Mr. Yun and pressed the Agency to remain engaged with Pyongyang. The West German-born nuclear inspector says he grew suspicious of Mr. Yun’s many trips to other European cities and his contacts with local companies. Mr. Yun even hinted to Mr. Theis that he might have no choice but to directly support North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programs if relations with the IAEA collapsed.

“He came to the conclusion that dealing with the international community was totally disappointing,” said Mr. Theis in a phone interview from Austria. “Mr. Yun had definitely learned how to establish contacts with all types of people [while in Vienna]—not just from the IAEA, but managers of companies.”

Mr. Theis’s concerns about Mr. Yun would be borne out in 2003, when a German businessman, Hans Werner Truppel, was arrested and eventually convicted by a Stuttgart court of selling 22 metric tons of aluminum tubes to Mr. Yun.

The North Korean and his company, Namchongang Trading, used offices in Beijing and Shenyang, China, to place orders for the equipment, which is critical to building centrifuges needed to enrich uranium, according to a German Customs Bureau report. U.S. officials briefed on the case were alarmed that Mr. Yun conducted some of his business through the offices of Shenyang Aircraft Industry Co., a Chinese state-owned firm.

In the ensuing months, the State Department aired its concerns about Mr. Yun’s activities to China’s government, according to former U.S. officials. But Beijing took no action.

China’s ministries of foreign affairs and commerce didn’t respond to requests for comment. Shenyang Aircraft says it had no recollection of any dealings with Mr. Yun.

Messrs. Chun and Yun have sought to accelerate North Korea’s weapons sales and procurement in recent years and allegedly have played important roles in strengthening Pyongyang’s military ties to countries such as Syria and Myanmar, say current and former U.S. officials.

North Korea analysts believe most of these transactions have been conducted through Office 99, which they describe as an international sales office and slush fund for Kim Jong Il.

“Anything that has to do with the imports and exports of weapons flows through Office 99,” says Oh Kongdan, a North Korea expert at Virginia’s Institute of Defense Analyses, a Pentagon-funded think tank. “It’s a royal patronage system.”

U.S. officials say that since the late 1990s they detected through intelligence channels intensifying military cooperation between North Korea and Syria, focused on everything from the development of chemical weapons to missiles.

In September 2007, Israeli jets bombed a facility in eastern Syria that U.S. officials say was a nearly operational replica of North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor. As many as 10 North Koreans died in the Israeli attack, according to U.S. officials. Mr. Yun and Namchongang Trading are believed to have played a central role in brokering development of the facility.

“That particular company was all over the nuclear trade. There’s no question about it,” says John Bolton, who served as the Bush administration’s top non-proliferation official. Both Syria and North Korea have denied cooperating on developing nuclear technologies.

Over the past two years, U.S. and U.N. officials have also voiced concerns about North Korea’s deepening military ties with Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma.

North Korea engineers have helped Myanmar build a maze of fortified bunkers to house senior government officials and military installations, according to Burmese defectors and commercial satellite photos. Current and former U.S. officials say Washington has intervened to block the transfer of Scud missiles to Myanmar from Pyongyang.

In June, Japan’s Ministry of Economy and Trade banned Tokyo-based Toko Boeki Trading Co. and device maker Riken Denshi from conducting international trade after three of their affiliated executives, one of them an ethnic Korean, were arrested trying to send machine tools on an export-control list to Myanmar using a dummy company in Malaysia. The equipment could be used to develop either ballistic missiles or centrifuges for a uranium-enrichment program, according to weapons experts. And the U.N. in its May report said it was examining “suspicious” ties between Mr. Yun’s Namchongang Trading and Myanmar, possibly linked to these activities in Japan.

The Obama administration, in response, has announced a stepped-up campaign to block North Korea’s ability to raise funds through the arms trade. In addition to the new sanctions, the Pentagon has said it will intensify the interdiction of ships and planes believed to be carrying North Korean arms.

Still, Mr. Theis and other North Korea experts believe that it is only through dialogue that the West will be able to curb the North’s proliferation threat. Mr. Theis says he is recently lobbied the IAEA to allow him to return to Pyongyang to hold meetings with Mr. Yun. So far, he says, the IAEA hasn’t agreed.

UPDATE 1: According to Reuters:

President Barack Obama on Monday broadened U.S. financial sanctions on North Korea, freezing the U.S. assets of eight North Korean companies or agencies and four individual citizens.

The U.S. Treasury released a fact sheet detailing U.S. allegations against the North Korean entities and individuals targeted under the new U.S. executive order and a previous one. The following is a summary:

Companies and Agencies

The Reconnainance General Bureau
The Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) is North Korea’s premiere intelligence organization, created in early 2009 by the merger of existing intelligence agencies. The RGB trades in conventional arms and controls the North Korean conventional arms firm Green Pine Associated Corporation, which was also identified for sanctions under Obama’s order for exporting arms or related materiel from North Korea, the Treasury said.

Green Pine Associated Corp.
Green Pine was brought under the control of the RGB in 2009. The Treasury said it specializes in the production of maritime military craft and armaments, such as submarines, military boats and missiles systems, and has exported torpedoes and technical assistance to Iranian defense-related firms.

Green Pine is responsible for approximately half of the arms and related materiel exported by North Korea and has taken over many of the activities of the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation, according to the Treasury.

Office 39
Office 39 of the Korean Workers’ Party engages in illicit economic activity to support the North Korean government, the U.S. Treasury fact sheet said. Office 39 has branches throughout the nation that raise and manage funds and is responsible for earning foreign currency for senior party leaders through illicit activities such as narcotics trafficking.

Office 39 controls a number of entities inside North Korea and abroad through which the Treasury said it is involved in the production, smuggling, and distribution of narcotics, and it has also been involved in the attempted procurement and transfer to North Korea of luxury goods.

Office 39 produced methamphetamine and was also involved in its supply to small-scale North Korean smugglers for distribution through China and South Korea. It also operates poppy farms and produces opium and heroin, the Treasury said.

In 2009, Office 39 was involved in the failed attempt to purchase and export to North Korea — through China — two Italian-made luxury yachts worth more than $15 million and destined for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, the Treasury said.

Korea Mining Development Trading Corp. (KOMID)
KOMID is Pyongyang’s main arms dealer and main exporter of goods and equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons, with offices located in multiple countries around the world with the primary goal of facilitating weapons sales and seeking new customers for its weapons, according to the Treasury.

KOMID uses Korea Taesong Trading Company and Korea Heungjin Trading Company for trading purposes. Korea Taesong has acted on behalf of KOMID in dealings with Syria, and Korea Heungjin acts as the procurement arm of KOMID, the Treasury fact sheet said. Korea Heungjin is also suspected to have been involved in supplying missile-related goods to Iran’s Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, it said.

Korea Taesong was previously sanctioned by the U.S. Department of State in 2008 under the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act.

Munitions Industry Department
The Treasury said the Munitions Industry Department is responsible for overseeing the development of North Korea’s ballistic missiles, including the Taepodong-2 which was first test-launched in 2006 and has a possible range of 4,100 miles.

The Second Economic Committee
The Second Economic Committee is responsible for overseeing production of North Korea’s ballistic missiles. It also directs the activities of KOMID, according to the U.S. Treasury.

The Second Academy of Natural Sciences
The Second Academy of Natural Sciences is a national-level organization responsible for research and development of North Korea’s advanced weapons systems, including missiles and probably nuclear weapons. It uses a number of subordinate organizations, including Tangun Trading Corporation, to obtain technology, equipment, and information from overseas for use in North Korea’s missile and probably nuclear weapons programs, the U.S. Treasury said.

Individuals

Kim Yong-chol
General Kim Yong-chol commands the Reconnaissance General Bureau.

Ri Je-son and Ri Hong-sap
The U.S. Treasury fact sheet said Ri Je-son and Ri Hong-sop act for or on behalf of the General Bureau of Atomic Energy (GBAE), which is responsible for North Korea’s nuclear program and manages operations at the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center. GBAE was designated by the United Nations in July 2009 for its involvement in North Korea’s nuclear program and subsequently sanctioned by the State Department.

Ri Je-son is the director of GBAE and is responsible for facilitating several nuclear endeavors including GBAE’s management of Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center and Namchongang Trading Corporation, according to the Treasury.

Ri Hong-sop is a councilor for GBAE. He is also the former Director of Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center. In that capacity he oversaw the three core facilities that North Korea used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, the Treasury said.

Both Ri Je-son and Ri Hong-sop are also subject to the asset freeze and travel ban provisions under an earlier United Nations Security Council resolution.

Yun Ho-jin
Yun Ho-jin acts for or on behalf of Namchongang Trading Corporation (NCG), a North Korean trading company subordinate to GBAE. NCG has been involved in the procurement of Japanese- origin vacuum pumps that were identified at a North Korean nuclear facility, as well as nuclear-related procurement associated with a German individual.

Yun Ho-jin has acted on behalf of NCG in various capacities since the 1980s. As a senior official at NCG, he oversaw the import of items needed for North Korea’s uranium enrichment program.

Through an NCG office in China, Yun Ho-jin was also involved in purchases of sensitive material linked to the construction of a nuclear reactor in Syria, the Treasury fact sheet said.

He is also under U.N. Security Council asset freeze and travel ban sanctions.

ORIGINAL POST: Here is the full statement by the US Treasury Department:

August 30, 2010
TG-840

United States Designates North Korean Entities and Individuals for Activities Related to North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program

WASHINGTON – In joint actions, the U.S. Departments of Treasury and State today announced the designations of five North Korean entities and three individuals under Executive Order (E.O.) 13382 for supporting North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program. Executive Order 13382 is an authority aimed at freezing the assets of WMD proliferators and their supporters thereby isolating them from the U.S. financial and commercial systems.

Also today, President Obama signed an Executive Order that directs the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to target for sanctions individuals and entities facilitating North Korean trafficking in arms and related materiel; procurement of luxury goods; and engagement in illicit activities, including money laundering, the counterfeiting of goods and currency, bulk cash smuggling and narcotics trafficking. The new Executive Order supplements E.O 13382, under which North Korean entities have been designated to date, and is consistent with measures required in UNSCRs 1718 and 1874.

Korea Taesong Trading Company and Korea Heungjin Trading Company
Pyongyang-based entities the Korea Taesong Trading Company and Korea Heungjin Trading Company, are used by the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation (KOMID) for trading purposes. Korea Taesong Trading Company has acted on behalf of KOMID in dealings with Syria, and Korea Heungjin Trading Company acts as the procurement arm of KOMID. Korea Heungjin Trading Company is also suspected to have been involved in supplying missile-related goods to Iran’s Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group.

KOMID is Pyongyang’s premier arms dealer and main exporter of goods and equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons, with offices located in multiple countries around the world with the primary goal of facilitating weapons sales and seeking new customers for its weapons. It was listed in the Annex to E.O. 13382 of June 2005 and has been sanctioned by the United States repeatedly over the last 10 years for trading in missile technology. KOMID was also designated by the UNSCR 1718 Committee to be subject to the asset freeze provisions of UNSCR 1718.

Korea Taesong Trading Company was previously sanctioned by the U.S. Department of State in 2008 under the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA). INKSNA provides for the imposition of measures on entities or individuals for the transfer to or acquisition from Iran, Syria, or North Korea of equipment or technology controlled under multilateral export control lists or otherwise having the potential to make a material contribution to the proliferation of WMD or cruise or ballistic missile systems.

Second Economic Committee, Munitions Industry Department and Second Academy of Natural Sciences
The Munitions Industry Department and Second Economic Committee are involved in key aspects of North Korea’s missile program. The Munitions Industry Department is responsible for overseeing the development of North Korea’s ballistic missiles, including the Taepo Dong-2.

The Second Economic Committee is responsible for overseeing the production of North Korea’s ballistic missiles. The Second Economic Committee also directs the activities of KOMID.

The Second Academy of Natural Sciences is a national-level organization responsible for research and development of North Korea’s advanced weapons systems, including missiles and probably nuclear weapons. The Second Academy of Natural Sciences uses a number of subordinate organizations to obtain technology, equipment, and information from overseas, including Tangun Trading Corporation, for use in North Korea’s missile and probably nuclear weapons programs.

Tangun Trading Corporation is subordinate to the Second Academy of Natural Sciences and is primarily responsible for the procurement of commodities and technologies to support North Korea’s defense research and development programs and procurement, including materials that are controlled under the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) or the Australia Group. Tangun Trading Corporation was designated by the Department of State pursuant to E.O. 13382 in September 2009. Tangun Trading Corporation was also designated by the UNSCR 1718 Committee to be subject to the asset freeze provisions of UNSCR 1718.

Ri Je-son and Ri Hong-sop
Ri Je-son and Ri Hong-sop act for or on behalf of the General Bureau of Atomic Energy (GBAE), which is responsible for North Korea’s nuclear program and manages operations at the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center. GBAE was designated by the United Nations in July 2009 for its involvement in North Korea’s nuclear program and subsequently sanctioned by the Department of State under E.O. 13382 in September 2009.

Ri Je-son is the Director of GBAE and is responsible for facilitating several nuclear endeavors including GBAE’s management of Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center and Namchongang Trading Corporation.

Ri Hong-sop is a councilor for GBAE. He is also the former Director of Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center. In that capacity he oversaw the three core facilities that the DPRK used to produce of weapons-grade plutonium: the Fuel Fabrication Facility, the 5MWe Experimental Reactor, and the Radiological Laboratory (Reprocessing Plant).

Ri Je-son and Ri Hong-sop were also designated by the UNSCR 1718 Committee to be subject to the asset freeze and travel ban provisions of UNSCR 1718.

Yun Ho-lin
Yun Ho-jin acts for or on behalf of Namchongang Trading Corporation (NCG), a North Korean trading company subordinate to GBAE. NCG has been involved in the procurement of Japanese- origin vacuum pumps that were identified at a North Korean nuclear facility, as well as nuclear-related procurement associated with a German individual. NCG was designated by the State Department pursuant to E.O. 13382 in June 2009.

Yun Ho-jin has acted on behalf of NCG in various capacities since the 1980s. As a senior official at NCG, he oversaw the import of items needed for North Korea’s uranium enrichment program.

Through an NCG office in China, Yun Ho-jin was also involved in purchases of sensitive material linked to the construction of a nuclear reactor in Syria.

Yun Ho-jin was also designated by the UNSCR 1718 Committee to be subject to the asset freeze and travel ban provisions of UNSCR 1718.

Identifying Information:
Entity: Korea Taesong Trading Company
Location: Pyongyang, North Korea

Entity: Korea Heungjin Trading Company
AKA: Hunjin Trading Co.
Location: Pyongyang, North Korea

Entity: Second Economic Committee
Location: Kangdong, North Korea

Entity: Munitions Industry Department
AKA: Military Supplies Industry Department
Location: Pyongyang, North Korea

Entity: Second Academy of Natural Sciences
AKA: 2nd Academy of Natural Sciences
AKA: Che 2 Chayon Kwahak-Won
AKA: Academy of Natural Sciences
AKA: Chayon Kwahak-Won
AKA: National Defense Academy
AKA: Kukpang Kwahak-Won
AKA: Second Academy of Natural Sciences Research Institute SANSRI
Location: Pyongyang, North Korea

Individual: Ri Je-Son
AKA: Ri Che-Son
DOB: 1938

Individual: Ri Hong-Sop
DOB: 1940

Individual: Yun Ho-jin
AKA: Yun Ho-chin

According to the AFP:

The North Korean embassy is helping with investigations into a traffic incident involving one of its vehicles in the city-state’s brothel district, Singaporean officials said.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been in touch with the DPRK ambassador on this matter,” a ministry spokesman said in a statement issued late Friday.

“The DPRK ambassador has assured us that the DPRK embassy respected Singapore’s laws and would extend its full cooperation with the authorities in resolving the issue.”

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is the North’s official name.

Singapore police told AFP Saturday an investigation into the incident was still ongoing.

The traffic incident took place in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday in Geylang when a parked car was hit by the embassy vehicle, according to an earlier police statement.

“No one was in the stationary car, which suffered a slight dent at the rear,” the police statement said.

Geylang is Singapore’s red light district, where prostitutes openly offer their services on pavements and in licensed brothels, with short-time motels scattered along the neighbourhood’s narrow streets and lanes.

Read the full story here:
N.Korea helping to probe crash in Singapore
AFP
8/28/2010

According to KBS:

Families of South Koreans abducted by North Korea are seeking to file a complaint against North Korean leader Kim Jong-il with the South Korean prosecution for crimes against humanity.

The head of the organization of the abductees’ families said that his organization recently obtained a government document proving that North Korea abducted South Korean nationals.

He added that his organization will seek the indictment of the North Korean leader in South Korea. If that is impossible, the organization will sue the North Korean leader via the International Criminal Court.

Meanwhile, a South Korean civic organization, the Crime against Humanity Investigation Committee, sued the North Korean leader with the Hague-based International Criminal Court last month.

Established in 2002, the International Criminal Court is an independent international organization seeking to help end impunity for perpetrators of crimes against humanity. It has 111 member countries.

Read the full Story here:
Families of S.Korean Abductees to File Complaint against Kim
KBS
8/30/2010