North Korean Economy Watch

On November 18, 2010, the US Treasury Department issued the following press release:

Treasury Designates Key Nodes of the Illicit Financing Network of North Korea’s Office 39

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated Korea Daesong Bank and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13551 for being owned or controlled by Office 39 of the Korean Workers’ Party.  Office 39 is a secretive branch of the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) that provides critical support to North Korean leadership in part through engaging in illicit economic activities and managing slush funds and generating revenues for the leadership. Office 39 was named in the Annex to E.O. 13551, issued by President Obama on August 30, 2010, in response to the U.S. government’s longstanding concerns regarding North Korea’s involvement in a range of illicit activities, many of which are conducted through government agencies and associated front companies. Korea Daesong Bank is involved in facilitating North Korea’s illicit financing projects, and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation is used to facilitate foreign transactions on behalf of Office 39.

“Korea Daesong Bank and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation are key components of Office 39′s financial network supporting North Korea’s illicit and dangerous activities,” said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey.  “Treasury will continue to use its authorities to target and disrupt the financial networks of entities involved in North Korean proliferation and other illicit activities.”

E.O. 13551 targets for sanctions individuals and entities facilitating North Korean trafficking in arms and related materiel; procurement of luxury goods; and engagement in certain illicit economic activities, such as money laundering, the counterfeiting of goods and currency, bulk cash smuggling and narcotics trafficking. As a result of today’s action, any assets of the designated entities that are within U.S. jurisdiction are frozen and U.S. persons are prohibited from conducting financial or commercial transactions with these entities.

You can learn more about the Treasury’s press release here.

Here is the US Treasury Department’s new North Korea resource page.

In response, the Daedong Credit Bank issued the following press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

US Treasury Press Release 18th November 2010

London UK/Pyongyang DPRK, December 20th 2010

Daedong Credit Bank (DCB) has noted the press release of 18th November 2010 by the US Treasury and makes the following comments:

1.    Korea Daesong Bank (KDB) is a 30% shareholder in DCB.  DCB is not, and never has been, aware of any activity by KDB which is in breach of any of its obligations, domestic or international.  In particular, DCB is not aware of KDB having acted in breach of any sanctions.  DCB is not aware of any cause of concern about the conduct of KDB.

2.    KDB has no executive control of DCB.

3.    DCB is majority owned by overseas investors and is foreign-managed.

4.    DCB does not act and has never acted in breach of any of its domestic or international obligations.  DCB acts in a manner consistent with domestic and international law.

5.    DCB is apolitical and promotes foreign investment in the DPRK as a positive development.

The Daedong Credit Bank looks forward to playing a significant part in facilitating normal commercial relationships between the DPRK and the international business community.

About Daedong Credit Bank

Daedong Credit Bank is a joint venture retail bank based in Pyongyang. It was established in 1995 as “Peregrine Daesong Development Bank”. The Bank underwent a change of name and foreign ownership in 2000.

Daedong Credit Bank is the first, by fifteen years, foreign majority held bank in the DPRK. DCB considers itself a flagship successful joint venture in the DPRK, and a key part of the infrastructure needed to assist the foreign-invested ventures, which drive the country’s economic reforms.

The bank’s principal function is to offer normal “high street” banking facilities in hard currency to; foreign companies, joint ventures, international relief agencies and individuals doing legitimate business in the DPRK.

Daedong Credit Bank was the first bank in the DPRK to introduce, and vigorously implement, a comprehensive set of anti-money laundering procedures. DCB’s anti-money laundering procedure manual was introduced seven years ago, and subsequently updated based on anti-money laundering guidelines provided by the Asian Development Bank. The manual has been sent to, and accepted by, DCB’s international correspondent banks.

Daedong Credit Bank also maintains strict procedures for the detection and rejection of counterfeit bank notes; it uses regularly updated note checking machines, and has personnel with over 10 years’ of experience of handling notes. DCB have encountered and impounded the so-called ‘superdollar’ notes, proving that these notes (despite media misconceptions) are not undetectable.

The wealth of experience garnered over Daedong Credit Bank’s 15 years of successful operation is unrivaled.

Daedong Credit Bank has a significantly strong position in relation to the future economic development of the DPRK and, being the oldest established foreign invested commercial bank in the DPRK, it is the intention of the bank to capitalise on these advantages.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Daedong Credit Bank office address in Pyongyang is:

Daedong Credit Bank
401, Potonggang Hotel
Ansan-dong
Pyongchon District
Pyongyang
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Phone Switchboard  +850 2 381 2228/9    ext 401
Direct line     +850 2 381 4866
Mobile          +850 193 801 8400 *
*Note, the mobile number may not be obtainable from certain countries (eg UK and Hong Kong).
Corporate Website www.daedongcreditbank.com

UPDATE 2: Here is the actual Treasury Department Press Release (11/18/2010):

Treasury Designates Key Nodes of the Illicit Financing Network of North Korea’s Office 39

11/18/2010
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated Korea Daesong Bank and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13551 for being owned or controlled by Office 39 of the Korean Workers’ Party.  Office 39 is a secretive branch of the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) that provides critical support to North Korean leadership in part through engaging in illicit economic activities and managing slush funds and generating revenues for the leadership. Office 39 was named in the Annex to E.O. 13551, issued by President Obama on August 30, 2010, in response to the U.S. government’s longstanding concerns regarding North Korea’s involvement in a range of illicit activities, many of which are conducted through government agencies and associated front companies. Korea Daesong Bank is involved in facilitating North Korea’s illicit financing projects, and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation is used to facilitate foreign transactions on behalf of Office 39.

“Korea Daesong Bank and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation are key components of Office 39’s financial network supporting North Korea’s illicit and dangerous activities,” said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey.  “Treasury will continue to use its authorities to target and disrupt the financial networks of entities involved in North Korean proliferation and other illicit activities.”

E.O. 13551 targets for sanctions individuals and entities facilitating North Korean trafficking in arms and related materiel; procurement of luxury goods; and engagement in certain illicit economic activities, such as money laundering, the counterfeiting of goods and currency, bulk cash smuggling and narcotics trafficking. As a result of today’s action, any assets of the designated entities that are within U.S. jurisdiction are frozen and U.S. persons are prohibited from conducting financial or commercial transactions with these entities.

UPDATE 1: Here is the US Treasury Department’s web page on North Korea.

ORIGINAL POST: According to Reuters:

The United States sanctioned on Thursday two North Korean companies linked to a group it accuses of drug smuggling and other “illicit” activities to support the nation’s secretive leadership.

U.S. sanctions against North Korea aim in part to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear programs, which the United States views as a threat to its allies South Korea and Japan. The North tested nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009.

The Treasury Department’s moves against Korea Daesong Bank and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation will freeze any assets belonging to them that fall within U.S. jurisdiction as well as bar U.S. companies from dealing with them.

Their main aim is not to block North Korean assets in U.S. banks — analysts say there are unlikely to be any — but to discourage other banks from dealing with North Korea, thereby cutting off its access to foreign currency and luxury imports.

Perks and luxuries such as jewelry, fancy cars and yachts derived from North Korea’s shadowy network of overseas interests are believed to be one of the main tools Pyongyang uses to ensure loyalty among top military and party leaders to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

The Treasury described the two entities as “key nodes of the illicit financing network” of Office 39 of the Korean Workers’ Party, which it accuses of producing and smuggling narcotics to earn foreign exchange for the government.

“Korea Daesong Bank and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation are key components of Office 39’s financial network supporting North Korea’s illicit and dangerous activities,” Treasury Under Secretary Stuart Levey said in a statement.

Heroin Production?
The Treasury designated the two under a recent executive order that targets entities that support North Korea’s arms trafficking, facilitate its luxury goods purchases and engage in illicit economic activities such as money laundering, drug and bulk cash smuggling and counterfeiting goods and currency.

President Barack Obama signed the executive order on August 30 allowing the Treasury to block the U.S. assets of North Korean entities that trade in arms or luxury goods, counterfeit currency or engage in money laundering, drug smuggling or other “illicit” activity to support the government or its leaders.

When that executive order was announced, the Treasury accused Office 39 of producing opium and heroin and of smuggling narcotics such as methamphetamine.

U.S.-North Korean relations have deteriorated since Obama took office, with his aides deeply unhappy about Pyongyang’s decision to conduct nuclear and missile tests last year as well as the March 26 sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan.

Forty-six South Korean sailors were killed in the incident, which the United States, South Korea and other nations blame squarely on North Korea. Pyongyang denies responsibility.

In the August 30 executive order, Obama cited the Cheonan’s sinking as well as 2009 nuclear and missile tests by North Korea as evidence it poses “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security, foreign policy and economy.

The Obama administration has been skeptical about returning to so-called six-party negotiations with the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia under which Pyongyang committed in 2005 to abandon its nuclear programs.

U.S. officials say they do not want to talk for the sake of talking and North Korea must show some commitment to abandoning its nuclear programs.
Read the full story here:
U.S. sanctions two North Korean entities
Reuters
Arshad Mohammed
11/18/2010

According to KBS:

The U.S. Treasury Department has announced detailed rules concerning the implementation of U.S. sanctions on North Korea.

The Treasury listed additional regulations relating to the implementation of sanctions placed on the North in June 2009 for weapons testing and in August of this year in response to North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean warship.

The rules stipulate the definition and interpretation of terminology and procedures for implementing the sanctions by U.S. government agencies and financial institutes.

At present, there are two sets of sanctions effectuated by administrative orders in the U.S. that specifically target North Korea.

The sanctions have frozen assets of certain North Korean organizations and individuals and they also ban U.S. transactions with the designated entities.

The US Treasury Department has updated their North Korea page with all relevant information. You can see their web page here.

I have added this resource to my Economic Statistics Page and Business Resources Page.

Read the full story here:
US Treasury Adds Rules on NK Sanctions Implementation
KBS
11/5/2010

According to Radio Free Asia:

He said he has already received a Social Security Card, and in August 2011 will likely receive his green card allowing him status as a permanent resident of the United States.

But while he is excited about the opportunities he sees in America, Jo said his new life is not without its challenges.

“If there’s one thing that’s inconvenient here, that is the language barrier. I feel that I can hardly get a grip on everything I’m doing, including studying English,” he said.

“Time just flies by, and time is so precious… However, I finally feel at home —- free.”

The North Korean Human Rights Act, which allows the U.S. government to receive North Korean refugees, was signed into U.S. law by former President George W. Bush on Oct. 18, 2004.

It also allows the U.S. government to provide humanitarian assistance to North Koreans inside North Korea and provide grants to non-profit organizations which seek to promote human rights, democracy, rule of law, and the development of a market economy in the country.

The act also allows efforts to increase information flow inside North Korea and to provide humanitarian or legal assistance to North Koreans who have fled their nuclear-armed country.

The U.S. accepted a group of six North Korean refugees for the first time since the act was signed into law on May 5, 2006.

Read all about the defector here.

For the same reasons that President Obama has a tendency to take visiting dignitaries to my favorite hamburger restaurant in Arlington, VA, the North Koreans have designated “friendship farms” for countries the North Koreans enjoy or expect to enjoy cozy relations.  Below I have identified a few for you to check out on Google Earth.

DPRK-Iran Friendship Ripsok Cooperative Farm

Coordinates: 39°28’34.69″N, 125°29’48.92″E
This farm has been mentioned in this capacity in KCNA four times: here, here, here, and here.
Date first mentioned: May 17, 2007

DPRK-Russia Friendship Kochang Cooperative Farm

Coordinates: 38°58’3.82″N, 125°36’4.67″E
It has been mentioned in KCNA at least 26 times.  See here.
Date first mentioned:  June 23, 1999

DPRK-China Friendship Thaekam Cooperative Farm

Coordinates: 39°15’4.41″N, 125°41’53.06″E
This farm has been mentioned at least 29 times in KCNA.  See here.
Date first mentioned: June 1, 1997

I have also located friendship farms for: Laos, Poland, Cuba, Bulgaria, Vietnam, Malaysia,  Indonesia, Germany, Palestine, Cambodia, Mongolia, India, Syria, Nigeria, Libya, Egypt, New Zealand, Yugoslavia, and Pakistan.

The United States does not yet have a friendship farm in the DPRK, but maybe someday it will be Osan-ri in Sunan-kuyok, Pyongyang. This is where the Fuller Center plans to launch a housing project. Their planned location and site plans are posted below.

Jimmy Carter, who founded Habitat for Humanity, has recently endorsed this project. (UPDATE: more here and here)

Thanks again to Google Earth and GeoEye.

Samaritan’s Purse, the US-based, religious charitable organization, has published some pictures of their recent delivery of flood relief supplies to Sinuiju.

Here is one photo:

You should check out the other photos in the set here.

Here is a video they produced before takeoff.

Samaritan’s Purse is delivering a portion of the US government’s $750,000 flood relief campaign.

Additional information:
1. South Korean aid in response to the flood. China sends aid.

2. Video of Sinuiju. Official Chinese and DPRK photos of the flooding.

3. Here are previous posts about Samaritan’s Purse in the DPRK.

According to the Choson Ilbo:

The United States is offering $750,000 in emergency aid to North Korea to help aid recovery from devastating floods.

The U.S. Special Envoy for North Korea Human Rights, Robert King, told VOA Wednesday that the money will be given to three U.S. non-governmental organizations — Samaritan’s Purse, Global Resource Services, and Mercy Corps.

He said the organizations will use the money primarily for medical supplies and will fly the aid into Pyongyang beginning later this week.

Read the full story here:
U.S. Offers Flood Aid to N.Korea
Choson Ilbo
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

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 CBS News (8/29/2010):

As soon as Carter cleared the airspace of the repressive communist dictatorship with freed American prisoner Aijalon Mahli Gomes, who was granted amnesty after being sentenced to eight years hard labor for entering the country illegally, the State Department issued a travel warning telling Americans to stay away, CBS News’ State Department Reporter Charles Wolfson reports.

The travel warning tells U.S. citizens not to enter the country without “explicit official permission and an entry visa from the Government of North Korea.”

“The North Korean government will prosecute and sentence those who enter the DPRK without proper documentation,” the State Department notes, in an apparent attempt to reach the few Americans for whom Gomes’ story was somehow not enough warning. “North Korea’s penalties for knowingly or unknowingly violating North Korean laws are much harsher than are those in the United States for similar offenses.”

“Travel by U.S. citizens to North Korea is not routine, and U.S. citizens crossing into North Korea without proper documentation, even accidently, have been subject to arrest and long-term detention,” the warning adds. “Since January 2009, four U.S. citizens have been arrested for entering North Korea without the necessary documents. Three were charged with illegal entry and ‘crimes against the State.'”

It goes on to note that the United States does not maintain diplomatic relations with North Korea, limiting what it can do for citizens detained or injured there. It says even if you have a valid passport and visa to enter the country “you may be expelled, arrested, or imprisoned” for doing so.

The warning would seem to serve two purposes. One, simply to remind Americans of what they should already know: That North Korean is not going to welcome them with open arms if they elect to enter the country illegally, as Gomes and fellow Christian Robert Park did. And two, to make it clear that Carter’s trip to made nice with the leaders of the repressive regime in order to recover an American citizen doesn’t signal any sort of thaw in diplomatic relations.

As far as enterning the country legally you will be just fine–in fact probably safer than traveling almost anywhere else.