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Ryongchon explosion revisited

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

UPDATE 2 (2011-9-8): According to the Donga Ilbo:

Hyundai Group Chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun, who met North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in 2007, is known to have said Kim believes the 2004 train station explosion in the North Korean town of Ryongchon was an attempt to assassinate him.

According to a diplomatic report released recently by WikiLeaks, Hyun told U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Kathleen Stephens in 2009, “Kim believed that the explosion at Ryongchon Station was a failed attempt to assassinate him, and the (North Korean) People’s Army became his most trusted group after the incident.”

Hyun was quoted as saying, “After the time when his train was to pass Ryongchon Station was revealed through mobile phones, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il believed that the explosion occurred when his train almost reached the station, and after the incident, the introduction of mobile phones in the North was markedly delayed.”

According to the report, the chairman said, “Kim Jong Il fears assassination and a coup the most. He was not an irrational person in the past, but I feel he has changed recently in certain aspects.”

UPDATE 1 (2010-3-23): Adam Cathcart tracks down the original Chinese source and offers a translation:

Curtis, I believe the original source is an article in the Chongqing (Sichuan, PRC) Evening News. I’ll include the relevant Chinese text in two separate blocks and then translate it:

2004年4月22日中午时分，朝鲜平安北道龙川郡发生了一起严重的火车爆炸事故，导致近200人死亡，1500多人受伤，另有8000多幢房屋被毁。有分析认为，这次造成灾难性后果的朝鲜火车爆炸案，是一次针对朝鲜领导人金正日的暗杀企图。4月22日龙川爆炸事故时，有线索表明不良分子使用了手机，唯恐内部情报外泄，所以手机业务被停了。

On April 22, 2004, around noon, the story is that in North Korea’s North Pyong’an Province, Ryongchon County, a serious train explosion caused the deaths of nearly 200 people and injured more than 1,500 people, while more than 8000 homes were destroyed.

Some analysts believe that the catastrophic consequences of this North Korean train explosion followed from a attempted plan to target North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il for assassination.

At the time of the April 22 Ryongchon explosion, clues collected along the tracks indicated that unhealthy elements had used mobile phones. For fear that internal information would leak [to the outside], the mobile phone business would be stopped.

[Note: The last sentence is pretty interesting; the phrase used is “唯恐” which means “for fear that,” but it can also lead into the idiomatic expression 唯恐天下不乱 which means “in order that all under Heaven remain unchaotic,” which seems to be a tactful dynastic-type allusion to the idea that the DPRK could ignite whenever.]

停止移动电话服务举措的命令由朝鲜国防委员会直接下达，特别是在权力机关或特殊行业就职的人员使用手机受到了严格的限制，原先持有的手机也被没收。朝鲜在境内全面禁止使用手机之后，花大笔钱购置手机的居民大为不满，因为1台手机机身和入网费共约1300美元，在一夜之间就成了废品。

The order to stop mobile phone services came down directly from the [North] Korean National Defense Committee, particularly [stating] that the authority/rights of those in special business sectors to use mobile phones was [henceforth] strictly limited and that previously held mobile phones [should be] confiscated.

After North Korea totally banned mobile phone use within its borders, many residents/citizens, having spent big money (about 1300 USD for everything including accessories and network access fees) to purchase mobile phones, became dissatisfied due to the fact that their cell phones had been rendered into scrap overnight.

[As a side note, I wonder why this news is leaking out of the PRC at a time when Kim Jong Il is said to be mulling over a return trip to China, which would almost certainly be taken by train (through the same station?). It’s a bit mystifying. But then again, Chinese readers probably have more sympathy for North Korea’s striving elites than is often acknowledged and Xinhua, perhaps, puts this story out as a gentle reminder (at a time when people are getting arrested for downloading “unharmonious content” onto their mobile phones) that life in the PRC could be much, much worse. Just my two cents — hope this helps, and thanks for the post.]

ORIGINAL POST (3/22/2010): According to the Donga Ilbo:

A 2004 explosion at a railway station in North Korea was an attempt to assassinate leader Kim Jong Il, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency quoted an analysis as saying yesterday.

“The train explosion at Ryongchon Station in North Pyongan Province on April 22 that year killed nearly 200 people, injured more than 1,500, and destroyed more than 8,000 homes. The explosion is believed to have been an attempt to assassinate Kim,” Xinhua said.

Though Xinhua quoted an analysis, it is quite unusual for the news agency to say the explosion was an assassination attempt on Kim. Xinhua mentioned the incident while reporting on mobile phone use in North Korea.

The report said the number of mobile phone users in North Korea surged to 20,000 a year after mobile telecom service was launched in November 2002. Pyongyang, however, banned the use of mobile phones following the explosion.

Xinhua said the ban was imposed directly by the National Defense Commission, North Korea’s highest-ranking body, due to fears over the leak of news on the explosion outside of the communist country.

In the early days of mobile phone use, only officials at the people’s committee of the ruling Workers’ Party and the ministries of public safety, national security and defense could use them. After the explosion, however, as many as 10,000 mobile handsets were seized by authorities.

The cost of a mobile handset and registration was as high as 1,300 U.S. dollars when the greenback was traded at 1,200 to 1,300 North Korean won, equal to more than 600 months of monthly wages for the average North Korean worker (2.20 dollars).

In the face of mounting complaints over the ban, North Korean authorities re-allowed the use of mobile phones in March last year.

An estimated 120,000 North Koreans use mobile telecom service. Considering North Korea’s population of an estimated 24 million as of 2008, this translates into one handset per 200 people.

Xinhua added that mobile phones have brought about many changes in the lives of North Koreans.

I am taking this with a grain of salt until I find the source. I post it here so you can judge for yourself.

Here are before/after images of the Ryongchon explosion.

Read the full srticle here:
“2004 Explosion Was Attempt on Kim Jong Il`s Life”
Donga Ilbo
3/22/2010

Posted in Cell phones, Communications, Military, Railways | 3 Comments »

RoK estimates DPRK 1,000 missiles

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

According to NTI:

In the last two years, North Korea has increased the size of its estimated missile arsenal by 25 percent to 1,000 weapons, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young asserted today

The North’s cache of missiles includes intermediate-range ballistic missiles, Rodongs and Scuds, said a ministry spokeswoman to Agence France-Presse. In 2008, the agency believed that Pyongyang had 800 missiles.

A significant number of the missiles are fielded close to the two nations’ border and are aimed at Seoul and other sites within South Korea, officials have said.

The Yonhap News Agency recently reported that Pyongyang had established a new army detachment assigned to manage deployment of medium-range missiles that are thought to be able to reach U.S. military installations in Guam and Japan.

North Korea has also carried out three test-firings of intercontinental Taepodong missiles, which are potentially meant to fly as far as Alaska

Read the full story here:
North Korea’s Missile Stockpile Jumps to 1,000, South Says
NTI
3/17/2010

Posted in Military | 1 Comment »

How N.Korea Goes About Exporting Arms

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Choson Ilbo
3/10/2010

Curbing North Korea’s illicit arms trade is difficult since the renegade country launders containers carrying weapons three or four times, a defector who was in charge of illicit arms deals told the Chosun Ilbo on Monday.

The defector revealed that a factory in Jagang Province, which is believed to produce tractors, is the center of the communist country’s weapons production, including chemical warheads. The defector, who is under police protection, did not want his identity to be revealed fearing reprisal attacks against family members still in the North.

Foreign Forwarders Transport Weapons
Five departments of the North Korean government are involved in arms exports: the military arms production wing of the Workers’ Party, the Second Academy of Natural Sciences, the Surveillance Division of the People’s Armed Forces, Operational Department of the Workers’ Party and the Second Economic Committee. He said the Economic Committee, which is directly under the control of the powerful National Defense Commission, is the biggest.

The military arms production wing procures materials for the Yongbyon nuclear plant and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. “The General Bureau of Atomic Energy only produces yellow cake [the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment], while the arms production wing is in charge of the Yongbyon facility,” the defector said. The Second Academy of Natural Sciences exports missiles and also provides after-sales service for exported products by upgrading performance and exchanging components.

“The main client is the research center of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, while experiments are conducted in unison,” he said. Iran successfully test-fired a rocket on Feb. 3 which is believed to have been powered by the same engine as North Korean Rodong missiles.

But international sanctions against North Korea make it difficult to export weapons by conventional means. “This is where the Surveillance Division of the People’s Armed Forces comes in,” the defector said. Its “traders,” who studied at Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, are fluent in English and Chinese and sign deals with “forwarders” from other countries. Through this process, North Korea sends containers across the Apnok (or Yalu) River to China one third or half filled with weapons. “The forwarder who received this cargo enters a port in a third country, where the containers are filled with freight unrelated to weapons and the paperwork is completed,” he said.

These “laundered” containers are laundered again in Hong Kong, Singapore or other ports. “The containers are mixed with other cargo in those transit points. They are searched, but not thoroughly,” the defector added. “Even if customs or other officials roll their sleeves up and search for weapons, how can they possibly find the arms among the mountains of other containers headed to other countries?”

‘Tractor Factory’ Is Weapons Production Base
North Korea’s main weapons production base is Kanggye General Tractor Plant No. 26. Before the Korean War, the plant was based in Pyongyang and made Soviet-designed PPSh 41 submachine guns but has since been relocated. Over 10,000 workers there manufacture ammunition and even chemical weapons. The People’s Armed Forces is in charge of chemical weapons production. “The Bio-chemical research center affiliated with the military is located next to the Kanggye plant,” the defector said. “The toxic gases produced at the research center are loaded onto warheads manufactured at the plant.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il makes a point of visiting the factory two to three times a year. He last paid a visit on Dec. 9, 2009.

AK-47 Rifles and Ammunition Are Top Sellers
“Small arms ammunition are hot export items and the Second Economic Committee even built a factory in Ethiopia,” the defector said. The rugged AK-47s, which can operate flawlessly even in the sand-filled battlefields of the Middle East, are extremely popular, he said.

Anti-tank missiles are more complicated to manufacture, so the blueprints are in Russia, while North Korean factories are merely subcontractors. North Korean arms are believed to be exported to Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines. “North Korean weapons with engines [such as tanks] are extremely poor quality, but those carrying warheads are not bad,” the defector said. Around 20 percent of the parts used to make export versions of missiles are imported. But missiles for domestic use are made using mostly North Korean-made parts, so there is a difference in performance. “North Korea tried to import Harpoon anti-ship missiles from Taiwan,” he added. “This probably has something to do with the South Korean Navy’s use of the Harpoon missiles.”

Dear Choson Ilbo: We have very good satellite imagery of Kanggye. Please tell us where the Kanggye General Tractor Plant is! Here are three guesses as to where the plant is: guess 1, guess 2, guess 3. Kim Jong Il has a villa in Kanggye here. Here is his private train station near Kanggye.

Posted in Arms shipment, Illicit activities, International trade, Military | 3 Comments »

DPRK Myanmar military relationship growing

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

According to the Washington Post:

The Obama administration, concerned that Burma is expanding its military relationship with North Korea, has launched an aggressive campaign to persuade Burma’s junta to stop buying North Korean military technology, U.S. officials said.

Concerns about the relationship — which encompass the sale of small arms, missile components and technology possibly related to nuclear weapons — in part prompted the Obama administration in October to end the George W. Bush-era policy of isolating the military junta, said a senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Senior U.S. officials have since had four meetings with their Burmese counterparts, with a fifth expected soon. “Our most decisive interactions have been around North Korea,” the official said. “We’ve been very clear to Burma. We’ll see over time if it’s been heard.”

…

Underlining the administration’s concerns about Burma is a desire to avoid a repeat of events that unfolded in Syria in 2007. North Korea is thought to have helped Syria secretly build a nuclear reactor there capable of producing plutonium. The facility was reportedly only weeks or months away from being functional when Israeli warplanes bombed it in September of that year.

“The lesson here is the Syrian one,” said David Albright, president of the nongovernmental Institute for Science and International Security and an expert on nuclear proliferation. “That was such a massive intelligence failure. You can’t be sure that North Korea isn’t doing it someplace else. The U.S. government can’t afford to be blindsided again.”

Burma is thought to have started a military relationship with North Korea in 2007. But with the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution last June banning all weapons exports from North Korea, Burma has emerged “as a much bigger player than it was,” the senior U.S. official said.

In a report Albright co-wrote in January, titled “Burma: A Nuclear Wannabe,” he outlined the case for concern about Burma’s relations with North Korea. First, Burma has signed a deal with Russia for the supply of a 10-megawatt thermal research reactor, although construction of the facility had not started as of September.

Second, although many claims from dissident groups about covert nuclear sites in Burma are still unverified, the report said that “there remain legitimate reasons to suspect the existence of undeclared nuclear activities in Burma, particularly in the context of North Korean cooperation.”

Previous posts about the Myanmar-DPRK relationship can be found here.

Read the full story here:
U.S. increasingly wary as Burma deepens military relationship with North Korea
Washington Post
John Pomfret
3/4/2010

Posted in Arms shipment, Illicit activities, International trade, Military, Myanmar, Uncategorized | Comments Closed

North Korea: It’s the Economy, Stupid

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Nautilus Institute Policy Forum Online 10-015A
Aiden Foster-Carter
3/4/2010

Too many Kim Yong-ils

Korean names can set traps for the unwary. Amid a multitude of Kims, almost all unrelated, North Korea adds an extra twist. German speakers, and some others, tend to mispronounce the J in Kim Jong-il as a Y. Not only is this incorrect, but currently it can confuse; for North Korea’s Premier – head of the civilian Cabinet, as distinct from the Dear Leader who chairs the more powerful National Defence Commission (NDC) – is named Kim Yong-il.

To add to the confusion, another Kim Yong-il was until recently vice foreign minister (one of several), but in January became director of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK)’s international department: a post apparently vacant since 2007. As such, this Kim Yong-il met his Chinese counterpart Wang Jiarui, head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s international liaison department, when Wang visited Pyongyang in early February. Since his promotion, Kim Yong-il 2 (as it may be best to call him) has been reported as frequently at Kim Jong-il’s side. This suggests he may see far more of the Dear Leader than does anyone else involved in DPRK foreign policy, including the man hitherto thought to be the eminence grise on that front: first vice foreign minister Kang Sok-ju, who negotiated the 1994 Agreed Framework with the US. It was Kang whom the current US special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, demanded to meet when he visited Pyongyang in December, rather than the North’s main nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan: a more junior deputy foreign minister.

Or is Washington behind the curve? That Kim Yong-il 2 is the DPRK’s new foreign affairs head honcho seemed confirmed on February 23, when he turned up in Beijing and went right to the top: going straight into talks with President Hu Jintao and separately with Wang Jiarui. This flurry of activity suggests two possibilities. Either Kim Jong-il will soon visit China, as he is overdue to do; or North Korea may return to the nuclear Six Party Talks (6PT), which have not met in over a year. Or perhaps both, if we are especially fortunate.

If both Kim Yong-ils are now leading players, perhaps one of them could change his name? That is not a frivolous suggestion. Some DPRK officials do this, for no clear reason. Often the change is small, so this is not a case of deception. Thus Paek Nam-sun, DPRK foreign minister – meaning chief meeter and greeter rather than top negotiator – from 1998 until his death in 2007, was originally Paek Nam-jun. Ri Jong-hyok, who as vice-chairman of the Asia-Pacific Peace Committee (APPC) now handles relations with the South, was Ri Dong-hyok in the 1980s when this writer knew him as head of North Korea’s mission in Paris.

(For completeness, yet another Kim Yong-il was Kim Jong-il’s late half-brother. He died of liver cirrhosis in 2000 aged only 45 in Berlin, where he had a diplomatic posting tantamount to exile – as his elder brother Kim Pyong-il, the DPRK ambassador to Poland, still does.)

Jong and Yong both say sorry

The past month saw both Chairman and Premier Kim doing something almost unheard of in Pyongyang. Apparently they both said sorry, although some reports got the two muddled up.

On February 1 Rodong Sinmun, daily paper of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), reported Kim Jong-il as lamenting his failure to fulfil his late father Kim Il-sung’s pledge, to which he had also alluded shortly before on January 9, that all North Koreans would eat rice and meat soup (everyday fare for even the poorest South Korean, be it noted). This time Kim said: “What I should do now is feed the world’s greatest people with rice and let them eat their fill of bread and noodles. Let us all honour the oath we made before the Leader and help our people feed themselves without having to know broken rice [an inferior version]”.

Given Kim Jong-il’s own notoriety as gourmet and gourmand, his professed “compassion” for his less fortunate subjects’ deprivation may induce queasiness. Yet even this not-quite-apology glosses over the truth. Broken rice? They should be so lucky. As readers of Barbara Demick’s excellent and heartbreaking new book Nothing to Envy will know, rice of any kind – whole or broken – is a rare luxury for most North Koreans. In the late 1990s a million or so starved to death; even today most remain malnourished. One refugee who fled to China saw her first rice in years in the first house she came to – in a dog’s bowl. That is the true reality.

Worse, all this was and is avoidable: the result of stupid and vicious policies, not the natural disasters that the regime blames. The real cause was the government’s failure to adapt in the 1990s after Moscow abruptly pulled the plug on aid. This hurt other ex-Soviet client states too. Cuba went for tourism; Vietnam tried cautious reform; Mongolia sold minerals. North Korea, bizarrely, did nothing – except watch its old system break down and growth plunge.

In a speech at Kim Il-sung University in December 1996, when famine was seriously biting, Kim Jong-il lashed out at the WPK and uttered this petulant but very revealing whinge:

In this complex situation, I cannot solve all the problems while I have the duty of being in charge of practical economic projects as well as the overall economy, since I have to control important sectors such as the military and the party as well. If I concentrated only on the economy there would be irrecoverable damage to the revolution. The great leader told me when he was alive never to be involved in economic projects, just concentrate on the military and the party and leave economics to party functionaries. If I do delve into economics then I cannot run the party and the military effectively.

Evidently Bill Clinton’s famously apt watchword, which helped him win the presidency in 1992, had not breached North Korea’s thick walls and heads. It’s the economy, stupid! The paternal advice was dead wrong. (The full speech can be read on the much-missed Kimsoft website. Unsurprisingly it is not part of the DPRK’s official canon of the dear leader’s works, but the scholarly consensus is that it is genuine. A slightly different version appears here.)

Redenomination disaster

Mass starvation, you might hope, would prompt some soul-searching and fresh thinking. From mid-2002 North Korea did essay cautious market reforms, but recently it has tried to squash Pandora back in her box. The latest such crass effort, a currency redenomination that deliberately wiped out most people’s meagre savings, was discussed in December’s Update.

By all accounts this has backfired badly, sparking runaway inflation (which it was supposed to stanch) and even riots. Forced on the defensive, the regime has issued an unprecedented apology. This being North Korea, it has not done so publicly; there are limits. Nor, in 2010 as in 1996, is Kim Jong-il about to take the rap, despite some newswires confusing J with Y.

But reliable intelligence claims that on February 5 Premier Kim Yong-il called all leaders of neigbourhood groups (inminban) to Pyongyang. The lowest unit in the DPRK’s still tight system of socio-political control, each comprises 20-40 households. This suggests that over 10,000 people heard the premier say what no leader had ever said to them before: sorry. In his words: “I offer a sincere apology about the currency reform, as we pushed ahead with it without sufficient preparation and it caused a great pain to the people… We will do our best to stabilize people’s lives.” The audience’s reaction is not recorded.

The situation on the ground remains confused, but markets appear to be functioning again unhindered. Good Friends, a seemingly well-informed South Korean Buddhist NGO, said on February 18 that after examining a report on food shortages and conditions nationwide by the Office of Economic Policy Review, the WPK Central Committee issued an ‘Order for Absolutely No Regulation Regarding Foodstuffs’. All markets are to reopen as they were before recent government crackdowns, and under no circumstances must local authorities try to regulate food sales – “until central distribution is running smoothly.” There may be a sting in that tail, but for now this is a complete, humiliating government U-turn and climbdown.

This is an astonishing episode, which history may record as pivotal. If the leadership learns its lesson and finally accepts that the market economy is as ineluctable as gravity, then the DPRK might conceivably survive on a reconstituted economic base and social contract, like today’s China or Vietnam. But if Kim Jong-il (or whoever) keeps trying to square the circle, under the delusion that correct politics is a substitute for sound economics, there is no hope.

Sea shells

Relations with South Korea remain an odd blend of sabre-rattling and dialogue. Four times in the past month, starting on January 25 and most recently on February 19, the North has declared a series of no-sail zones for varied time periods. Some of these adjoin two ROK-held islands close to the Northern coast, Baengnyong and Daechong. For three days (January 27-29) the Korean People’s Army (KPA) fired volleys of artillery shells near the Northern Limit Line (NLL): the de facto western sea border since 1953, which the North rejects.

Though no shells actually crossed the NLL, on the first day the South called this provocative and fired back – but again only within its own waters south of the line. By late February, a Southern defence spokesman called the latest shelling “a routine situation that is part of the North’s winter military exercise”, adding that this may go on till the end of March. Routine or not, a report submitted to the ROK National Assembly’s Defence Committee on February 19 said Pyongyang has reinforced its military along the west coast of the peninsula and has strengthened military drills.

Kaesong and Kumgang remain unsettled

The shelling did not stop the Koreas talking about their two joint venture zones just north of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). But they got nowhere, beiing far apart on the agenda, format and venue for talks. On the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) – see last month’s Update for more details – the North suggested that the South’s issues – it wants smoother cross-border passage – were best left to military-level talks, which in the past have handled issues relating to the border and security. The South agreed, proposing February 23 at the border village of Panmunjom: the venue for all military meetings hitherto. The North then counter-proposed March 2, at Kaesong; but on February 22 the South said it will insist on Panmunjom, rather than set the precedent of holding a military meeting inside North Korea. With both venue and agenda still in dispute, the chances of progress on the substantive issues looks remote.

Mount Kumgang tours remain suspended

Separately, South Korea with some misgivings accepted the North’s request for talks on resuming tours to the Mount Kumgang resort, suspended since a Southern tourist was shot dead there in July 2008. At the talks held in Kaesong on February 8, North Korea asked for tours to restart from April 1. It breezily declared that the South’s three conditions – a probe into the shooting, efforts to ensure no repetition, and a cast-iron safety guarantee – had been met. But as the North well knows, the South’s key demand is to send in its own investigating team – which the North resolutely refuses. The Northern side proposed continuing the talks on February 12, but the South declined unless the North accepts their three conditions first.

More arms are interdicted

UN sanctions imposed last June after North Korea’s second nuclear test seem to be biting. In February South Africa told the Security Council that in November it inspected a ship headed for the Congo Republic (Congo-Brazzaville). The French owners reported suspicions about cargo they took on in Malaysia from a Chinese vessel. Seizing the containers, South Africa found that what the manifest called “spare parts of bulldozer” were in fact tank components. The shipping agent, and likely origin, is North Korean. China said it will investigate its own vessel’s role in the affair. UN resolution 1874 bans almost all DPRK weapons exports.

More ambiguously, on February 11 Thailand dropped charges against the crew of a plane seized in December and found to contain 35 tonnes of weapons from North Korea, including five crates of Manpads (man-portable air defence systems) which terrorists can use to shoot down aircraft. Next day all five were put on a flight to Almaty. Four are Kazakhs, and their government had asked that they be sent home to be tried. It will be dismaying if they are not.

Posted in 2002 Economic reforms, Arms shipment, Cabinet, Fiscal & monetary policy, Food, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), Illicit activities, International Department (KWP), Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), Military, Mt. Kumgang Tourist Special Zone, Special Economic Zones (Established before 2013), Worker's Party | Comments Closed

DPRK weapons shipment seized

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

UPDATE 2: According to the Los Angeles Times:

In the report, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, the South African government said the two containers are currently stored in a state-secured warehouse in Durban while its investigation continues. It estimated the value of the conventional arms at 6 million rand (about $770,000)

The shipment’s final destination, according to the bill of lading, was the port of Pointe Noire in the Republic of Congo, the small oil-rich country often overshadowed by its larger neighbor, Congo. The Republic of Congo, whose capital is Brazzaville, has reportedly experienced a wave of recent violence.
…
The report to the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against North Korea is entitled “breach of the Security Council resolutions…”

It traced the shipment from the DGE Corporation via the “Machinery Expand Imp Corp (cq),” both established to be in North Korea, to the Chinese port of Dalian where it was put on board the CGM Musca on Oct. 20.

The bill of lading described the contents of the two containers as “spare parts of bulldozer,” according to the report.

At Port Klang, Malaysia, the shipment was transferred to another vessel, the Westerhever, which was chartered by Delmas Shipping, a subsidiary of the French shipping company, CMA-CGM, the report said. Delmas requested that CMA-CGM Shipping Agencies South Africa (Pty) Ltd. represent the Westerhever on its voyage to South Africa.

The captain was instructed to refuel in Durban on Nov. 28-29, but due to fuel shortages in Durban, the Westerhever was ordered to take on fuel in Walvis Bay, the report said.

While en route to Walvis Bay on Nov. 27, the captain “received an email instruction from Delmas to make a U-turn and discharge the two containers in Durban, the report said.

A U.N. diplomat familiar with the report, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the email informed the captain that the ship was carrying suspicious cargo which should be turned over for inspection to South African authorities in Durban.

Martin Baxendale, a spokesman for CMA-CGM, said in Paris that the company was in contact with South African authorities but said “we cannot enter into discussions relating to any details in regard to this matter.”

According to the report, “a large quantity of rice grains in sacks lined the containers and was utilized as protective buffers for the conveyance of the conventional arms.”

UPDATE 1: According to the Wall Street Journal:

According a terse, two-page account delivered by the Pretoria government earlier this month to the U.N. committee overseeing the enforcement of U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed on North Korea, South African authorities in November seized two containers filled with tank parts and other military equipment from North Korea. The report said the containers, which were loaded on a ship in the Chinese port of Dalian and bound for the Republic of the Congo, contained gun sights, tracks and other spare parts for T-54 and T-55 tanks and other war material valued at an estimated $750,000.

The military equipment was concealed in containers lined with sacks of rice, said the confidential South African report, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Shipping documents identified the cargo as spare parts for a “bulldozer,” according to the report, which said the goods were shipped by a North Korean company.

ORIGINAL POST: According to Reuters (via Yahoo):

South Africa has told a U.N. Security Council committee it intercepted a North Korean weapons shipment bound for Central Africa, which diplomats said was a violation of a U.N. ban on arms sales by Pyongyang.

The seizure took place in November, when South African authorities received information that a ship headed for Congo Republic was carrying containers with suspicious cargo, according to a letter sent by South Africa to the Security Council’s North Korea sanctions committee.

Several Western diplomats described the incident as a “clear-cut violation” of Security Council resolution 1874, which bans all North Korean arms exports and most weapons-related imports in response to its nuclear program.

The letter, parts of which were seen by Reuters on Monday, said a North Korean company was the shipping agent and the cargo was first loaded onto a ship in China, then transferred to a vessel owned by French shipping firm CMA CGM in Malaysia.

Diplomats said the French company alerted authorities to the fact it had suspicious cargo on board and was not believed to have done anything wrong. The South Africans intercepted the vessel and seized the containers, which held tank parts.

The letter, which the committee received last week, said the South Africans discovered “that the contents fell within the definition of conventional arms in that the contents consisted of components of a military tank T-54/T-55.”

The letter said the documentation for the containers described the cargo as “spare parts of bulldozer.” T-54 and T-55 tanks were designed and produced in the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s but were later upgraded and made in other countries.

Neither the French company nor the countries involved had any immediate comment.

Congo Republic, which borders Democratic Republic of Congo, has suffered a wave of violence in the Pool region between the capital Brazzaville and the oil port town of Pointe Noire that has broken a period of calm after a decade of instability.

COMMITTEE TO DECIDE
The diplomats said the committee was planning to send letters to countries involved in the case — such as North Korea, Republic of Congo, Malaysia and France — seeking more information so it can decide whether the North Koreans or any other nations were in breach of U.N. sanctions.

Resolution 1874, approved in June 2009, was passed in response to Pyongyang’s second nuclear test in May 2009 and expanded the punitive measures the Security Council had imposed on North Korea after its first atomic test in October 2006.

Last year’s resolution also authorized countries to inspect suspicious North Korean air, land and sea cargo and to seize any banned goods.

“The latest incident shows that the sanctions are working,” one Western diplomat told Reuters. “But it also shows that we have to be vigilant. The DPRK (North Korea) is still trying to violate the sanctions.”

Last week I mentioned that the UN Security Council was investigating four cases of alleged DPRK sanctions violations–but I only knew what three of the cases were:

Case 1: A North Korean shipment of chemical-safety suits that may have been destined for Syria’s military.

Case 2: Italy’s seizure of two luxury yachts allegedly bound for North Korea

Case 3: Thailand’s interdiction of North Korean arms aboard a plane allegedly bound for Iran

And now we know Case 4: Shipping of contraband to Central Africa.

Posted in Arms shipment, Illicit activities, Manufacturing, Military, UN Security Council | 1 Comment »

UNSC investigating DPRK sanctions violations

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

UPDATE: It looks like case 4 was a shipment of contraband to central Africa.

ORIGINAL POST: Ertugrul Apakan, Chair of the 1718 Sanctions Committee, is reported to be investigating four cases of UNSC sanctions violations by the DPRK. I have listed 3 of the 4 cases below with links (as identified by Business Week):

Case 1: A North Korean shipment of chemical-safety suits that may have been destined for Syria’s military.

Case 2: Italy’s seizure of two luxury yachts allegedly bound for North Korea

Case 3: Thailand’s interdiction of North Korean arms aboard a plane allegedly bound for Iran

Case 4: ?

According to Business Week:

Apakan told a closed session yesterday that South Korea said the suits were from North Korea and that his committee had received an unsolicited letter from Syria denying any involvement, according to diplomats who attended the briefing. They asked not to be identified.

Bashar Ja’afari, Syria’s ambassador to the UN, said his government sent the letter because South Korea’s report of the incident stated that the suits were bound for his nation. He said Syria conducted a “deep inquiry” and concluded it had nothing to do with the case.

Syria and the DPRK were also allegely working on a nuclear reactor together and Syria’s Tishreen War Museum was built by the North Koreans.

Security Council Report, an independent not-for-profit organisation in affiliation with Columbia University’s Center on International Organization, published a February 2010 report on the DPRK which contains additional information. See it here.

Posted in Arms shipment, Illicit activities, International trade, Military, Syria, UN, UN Security Council | 3 Comments »

DPRK-Malta relationship

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

The Marmot’s Hole posted some great information on the DPRK-Malta relationship. I encourage you to read his full post, but below I have posted information he provided from the Malta Independent:

With the Labour Party trying to project an image of a progressive and moderate all-inclusive party with new ideas, this newspaper asked Dr Sceberras Trigona, a former Foreign Minister in the Labour 1981-1987 government, for his views on the agreement he had signed with North Korea in July 1982.

At the time North Korea’s regime had, and still has, few ties with other countries due to its policy of self-reliance. However, Malta under Labour had close connections with the Asian country, with Kim Jong-Il, son of then dictator Kim Il-Sung, studying English at the University of Malta and reportedly visiting frequently with then Prime Minister Dom Mintoff.

Contact with Dr Sceberras Trigona was first made via telephone on Thursday, and he asked that the questions be sent by e-mail. The questions were as follows: 1) Given the political climate of the time, what led the Labour government to sign such an agreement with North Korea? 2) Why was a clause included in the agreement stipulating that the agreement should be kept a secret? 3) Would you sign such an agreement again if you were given the chance?

The answer to these questions received on Friday was two words: “Times change,” Dr Sceberras Trigona said tersely.

The signing of the agreement in 1982 had sparked off a political controversy after it was revealed by then Opposition Leader Eddie Fenech Adami during a Nationalist Party mass meeting in Floriana on 4 December 1983.

Newspaper reports later said that a high-level investigation had been started in the Foreign Affairs Ministry to find out who had leaked the information to Dr Fenech Adami.

In actual fact, two agreements had been signed for “a free offer of military assistance” with North Korea. The first agreement was signed in Valletta on 25 March 1982, three months after the perverse result of an election that returned the Labour Party to government in spite of obtaining fewer votes.

A second agreement, this time signed in Pyongyang in July of that same year, superseded the first, changing only the number of weapons and ammunitions that North Korea agreed to donate to Malta.

For Malta, the first agreement was signed by then Interior Minister Lorry Sant at the specific request of Dr Sceberras Trigona, who then signed the second agreement.

The agreement stipulated that North Korea “will, free of charge, provide (Malta) with weapons and ammunitions”.

The difference between the first and second agreement was in the number of weapons and amount of ammunition that North Korea agreed to give Malta – the number was increased in the second agreement.

Otherwise, the agreements were more or less the same. North Korea was responsible for the transportation of weapons and ammunition, and dispatched military instructors to train and teach local military personnel. Four instructors were sent for three months and were paid according to their military rank equivalent to those of Maltese officers.

The agreement stipulated that the Maltese government had to provide a one way ticket from Malta to Pyongyang to the instructors and “subsistence expenditure during the flight and expenses for lodging, meals, medical treatment, transport means (including the driver) and salaries during their stay in Malta, and training equipment needed in the education of the Maltese military personnel”.

The Maltese government had also agreed to “protect” the Korean instructors and “ensure their safety, and exempt them from Customs duties and taxes”.

Both sides also agreed to “observe strict secrecy in respect of all transaction made pursuant to this agreement and shall not disclose any matter hereof to any third country”.

Read the Marmot’s Hole post here.

Read the Malta Independent article here:
1982 Labour government “secret” agreement with North Korea
Malta Independent
Stephen Calleja
Date unknown

Posted in Arms shipment, Illicit activities, International trade, Malta, Military | Comments Closed

Thai authorities halt shipment of DPRK-made weapons

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

UPDATE 13: According to the Times of London, the weapons were headed for Hamas and Hezbollah:

An aircraft full of weapons seized in Bangkok last year was heading from North Korea to Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, and Hamas, the Palestinian group, Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli Foreign Minister, said yesterday.

The Thai authorities said that the aircraft was carrying 35 tonnes of weapons, including rockets and rocket-propelled grenades. The Thai Government informed the UN that the haul had been bound for Iran, which is believed to ship weapons to its ally Syria, which distributes them to Hezbollah or Hamas.

North Korea had the “intention to smuggle these weapons to Hamas and to Hezbollah”, Mr Lieberman said in Japan, where he was on an official visit. “This co-operation between North Korea and Syria [does not] improve the economic situation in their countries,” he added.

UPDATE 12: Thailand to release pilots. According to the AP (via the Washington Post):

Thai prosecutors dropped charges against the five-man crew of an aircraft accused of smuggling weapons from North Korea, saying Thursday the men would be deported to preserve good relations with their home countries.

The Attorney General’s Office said the decision was made after the governments of Belarus and Kazakhstan contacted the Thai Foreign Ministry and requested the crew’s release to face prosecution at home.

“To charge them in Thailand could effect the good relationship between the countries,” said Thanaphit Mollaphruek, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office. “We have decided to drop all the charges and deport them to their home countries.”

“To charge them in this case would not be a benefit to Thailand,” he added.

The crew – four Kazakhs and a Belarusian – were expected to be released later in the day, said their lawyer Somsak Saithong.

…

Thailand’s Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya indicated earlier this month the men would be released, telling reporters in Geneva the government had “suggested to the office of the attorney general to release them because the U.N. resolution does not oblige Thailand to … bring up charges on the pilots and the crew.”

Thursday’s decision was likely to spark international criticism. The weapons’ ultimate destination remains a mystery, though Thailand has said the plane’s final destination appears to have been Iran. Experts have also voiced concerns that authorities in the former Soviet republics have turned a blind eye to illicit activities of air freight companies that use Soviet-era planes to fly anything anywhere for a price.

A Thai government report to the U.N. Security Council, leaked to reporters in late January said the aircraft was bound for Tehran’s Mahrabad Airport.

But Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayarkorn said subsequently that “to say that the weapons are going to Iran, that might be inexact.”

“The report only says where the plane was going to according to its flight plan, but it doesn’t say where the weapons were going to,” he said. “It’s still under investigation, and the suspects are under our legal system.”

Investigations by The Associated Press in several countries showed the flight was facilitated by a web of holding companies and fake addresses from New Zealand to Barcelona designed to disguise the movement of the weapons.

Read previous posts on this topic below:
(more…)

Posted in International trade, Iran, Korea Mechanical Industry Co., Military, Syria, Thailand | 8 Comments »

US intelligence chief: North Korea military crumbling

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

According to the AP (Via Boston Herald):

President Barack Obama’s top intelligence official said Tuesday that North Korea relies on its nuclear weapons program because of a crumbling military that cannot compete with South Korea.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair described in testimony before the U.S. Congress a North Korean army that struggles with aging weapons, poorly trained, out-of-shape soldiers, inflexible leaders, corruption, low morale and problems with command and control.

North Korea, Blair said, has little chance of reversing a huge gap in military capabilities with South Korea and so “relies on its nuclear program to deter external attacks on the state and to its regime.”

…

Officials from South Korea, the U.S., Japan, Russia and China have been working to get North Korea back to nuclear disarmament talks after Pyongyang walked away from the negotiations last year. For more than a decade, the North has gained energy and aid concessions from the talks and then backed away from nuclear agreements.

Blair said the United States does not know whether the North had made nuclear weapons but that it has that capability. He said that while a 2006 nuclear test was a “partial failure,” the May test of last year was more successful.

Blair said North Korea has shipped missiles to Iran and Pakistan and helped Syria build a nuclear reactor.

The North is thought to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least half a dozen atomic bombs. North Korea argues that it was compelled to develop nuclear weapons to cope with a military threat from the United States, which has about 28,500 troops in the South.

Blair said North Korean leader Kim Jong Il wants recognition of his country as a nuclear weapons power, something he said the United States will not do.

Dennis Blair’s Annual Threat Assesment of the US Intelligence Commuity can be read here. Here is what it had to say about the DPRK:

North Korean WMD and Missile Programs

Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile programs pose a serious threat to the security environment in East Asia. North Korea’s export of ballistic missiles and associated materials to several countries including Iran and Pakistan, and its assistance to Syria in the construction of a nuclear reactor, exposed in 2007, illustrate the reach of the North’s proliferation activities. Despite the Six-Party October 3, 2007 Second Phase Actions agreement in which North Korea reaffirmed its commitment not to transfer nuclear materials, technology, or know-how we remain alert to the possibility North Korea could again export nuclear technology.

The North’s October 2006 nuclear test was consistent with our longstanding assessment that it had produced a nuclear device, although we judge the test itself to have been a partial failure based on its less-than-one-kiloton TNT equivalent yield. The North’s probable nuclear test in May 2009 supports its claim that it has been seeking to develop weapons, and with a yield of roughly a few kilotons TNT equivalent, was apparently more successful than the 2006 test. We judge North Korea has tested two nuclear devices, and while we do not know whether the North has produced nuclear weapons, we assess it has the capability to do so. It remains our policy that we will not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, and we assess that other countries in the region remain committed to the denuclearization of North Korea as has been reflected in the Six Party Talks.

After denying a highly enriched uranium program since 2003, North Korea announced in April 2009 that it was developing uranium enrichment capability to produce fuel for a planned light water reactor (such reactors use low enriched uranium); in September it claimed its enrichment research had “entered into the completion phase”. The exact intent of these announcements is unclear, and they do not speak definitively to the technical status of the uranium enrichment program. The Intelligence Community continues to assess with high confidence North Korea has pursued a uranium enrichment capability in the past, which we assess was for weapons.

Pyongyang’s Conventional Capabilities. Before I turn the North Korean nuclear issue, I want to say a few words regarding the conventional capabilities of the Korea People’s Army (KPA). The KPA’s capabilities are limited by an aging weapons inventory, low production of military combat systems, deteriorating physical condition of soldiers, reduced training, and increasing diversion of the military to infrastructure support. Inflexible leadership, corruption, low morale, obsolescent weapons, a weak logistical system, and problems with command and control also constrain the KPA capabilities and readiness.

Because the conventional military capabilities gap between North and South Korea has become so overwhelmingly great and prospects for reversal of this gap so remote, Pyongyang relies on its nuclear program to deter external attacks on the state and to its regime. Although there are other reasons for the North to pursue its nuclear program, redressing conventional weaknesses is a major factor and one that Kim and his likely successors will not easily dismiss. Six Party Talks and Denuclearization. In addition to the TD-2 missile launch of April 2009 and the probable nuclear test of May 2009, Pyongyang’s reprocessing of fuel rods removed from its reactor as part of the disablement process appears designed to enhance its nuclear deterrent and reset the terms of any return to the negotiating table. Moreover, Pyongyang knows that its pursuit of a uranium enrichment capability has returned that issue to the agenda for any nuclear negotiations. The North has long been aware of US suspicions of a highly enriched uranium program.

We judge Kim Jong-Il seeks recognition of North Korea as a nuclear weapons power by the US and the international community. Pyongyang’s intent in pursuing dialogue at this time is to take advantage of what it perceives as an enhanced negotiating position, having demonstrated its nuclear and missile capabilities.

…

North Korea and Venezuela possess more limited intelligence capabilities focused primarily on regional threats and supporting the ruling regime. North Korea continues to collect information on US technologies and capabilities. Venezuela’s services are working to counter US influence in Latin America by supporting leftist governments and insurgent groups.

Posted in Military, Nuclear, USA | 1 Comment »

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