How North Korea Cheats Sanctions

In July 2013, U.S. law-enforcement was tipped off about a North Korean vessel that was making its first visit to the Americas in four years. Authorities were told the Chong Chon Gang, which was supposed to be carrying sugar from Cuba to North Korea, was hiding drugs or weapons in its cargo. U.S. officials informed their Panamanian counterparts, who intercepted the vessel, finally managing to seize it after a five-day standoff with the ship’s crew. What they found inside became the stuff of punch lines: Cold War-era military equipment on its way to be repaired in North Korea.

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Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who spent nearly two decades working in the U.S. government, pointed out that other countries and regions are involved in trade with North Korea, as well, though on a smaller scale. Malaysia has long maintained close ties with the North (though those ties suffered this year following the assassination of Kim Jong Un’s half-brother in Kuala Lumpur). Singapore sells it luxury goods; European firms ski equipment. Iran and Syria have bought its ballistic-missile technology, while other Middle Eastern countries employ North Korean workers. China may be North Korea’s dominant trade partner, Ruggiero told me, but “there’s still enough there on the outside to start squeezing” North Korea’s other trading partners. In that case, even if China doesn’t fully comply with the new sanctions, “it could still start to impact North Korea.”

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