It’s possible that North Korea’s methods for evading UN sanctions are becoming increasingly sophisticated, as the number of of reports made to the UN Panel of Experts has decreased, former coordinator of the Panel Martin Uden told NK News in an in-depth interview.

“Frankly, I doubt that this [decrease in incident reports] is a reflection of the DPRK no longer contravening sanctions, I think it’s a matter of them getting rather cleverer at it. It could be their procurement requirements are changing, or it could be they are finding it more difficult to sell their arms overseas,” Uden said, adding that “All those things could be coming together.”

But despite increasingly tight sanctions and increased spotlight on the work of the Panel, North Korea has continued to develop its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. In particular, the seizure of a DPRK cargo vessel in Panama in 2013 – the Chong Chon Gang – highlighted that North Korea remains actively engaged in sanction-breaking behavior.

But even though the most recent Panel of Experts report published in March concluded that the vessel’s cargo of munitions – MiG fighter jets and Soviet-era radar systems – did constitute a breach of sanctions, the response from the UN Sanctions Committee was muted.

“The problem of course is the lack of action by the Sanctions Committee, and that I think is more regrettable. This [case] was a pretty much an in flagrante delicto violation of UN sanctions” Uden said.

Last month the Panamanian authorities acquitted the Chong Chon Gang’s senior officers who were held on charges of illegal arm trafficking through the Panama Canal. The release meant that all 35 crew members were freed, and the vessel returned to North Korea upon payment of a $690,000 fine.

And now, the lack of action on the part of the UN Sanctions Committee also means that the Pyongyang based shipping companies involved in the Chong Chon Gang case have not had their operations officially curtailed.

“In those cases it’s pretty clear those companies were involved in breach of sanctions and should have been designated as required by pertinent resolutions” Uden explained.

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Martin Uden, former head of coordinator of UN Panel of Experts – Full Interview

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NK News: The Panamanian authorities recently released the last three imprisoned crew members of the Chon Chong Gang, on the grounds that the charges fell outside the Court’s jurisdiction. What’s your take on that?  

First of all, these things are absolutely a matter for Panama to sort out. What, if any transgression of Panamanian law has been committed, is a matter for Panama rather than the UN. As we know, around the world, countries interpret differently the UN resolutions and implement them differently into their national legislation. So what might be illegal in the UK might not be illegal in Panama, and vice versa.

We found cases like this elsewhere. Although the panel considered that there was a breach of sanctions, that didn’t necessarily mean that that was what you’d be charged with. After all, it’s always up to national authorities whether they want to charge people for these offences. And sometimes they find other means to achieve the correct legal end.

In the Panama case, my understanding throughout was that they wouldn’t want to charge them with a breach of UN resolutions related to the DPRK, but rather would want to use Panama Canal regulations.

Why the court has decided to they are not covered (by legislation), I know not.

NK News: Given that the Chong Chon Gang case was a clear breach of sanctions, but all crew members were released and very little action was taken internationally, what message does that send to other countries about the reporting of possible sanctions breaches?

In terms of what Panama has done, they have imposed a fine on the ship. The ship was impounded for eight or nine months. The entire cargo was confiscated, both the sugar and the contraband. That is a clear punishment, for both Cuba and the DPRK.

The crew themselves were kept for six months, and the senior officers kept for a year. In terms of municipal legislation, that strikes me as fair enough, particularly when one remembers the nature of the cargo. They weren’t doing serious gun running. It wasn’t the carrying of ballistic missiles or nuclear components, even though we still aren’t clear what the real objective of it all was. It clearly wasn’t going to upset the balance of power anywhere.

“The problem of course is the lack of action by the Sanctions Committee”

So it strikes me from a municipal point of view – what Panama did, this was entirely an appropriate way to act.

The problem of course is the lack of action by the Sanctions Committee, and that I think is more regrettable. This was a pretty much an in flagrante delicto violation of UN sanctions. Even though Cuba had some explanation as to why they thought this was ok, I haven’t come across any member state, other than Cuba, that actually supported that argument, or any serious argument that this is not, a clear breach of sanctions.

So why the Committee has been unable to take any particular action, especially when they had clear evidence as to who owned the ship and who ran the ship, I don’t know. Though I don’t know what further discussions there have been in the Committee since I left.

NK News: What do you think should have been done? 

In this case, I think the Panel found a compelling case against the owners and managers of the ship. As usual when looking at DPRK ships there is a certain opacity to it all. You couldn’t really be sure who was in charge or which of the two [North Korean shipping] companies were pulling the strings. But I think there was enough evidence to be pretty clear about that.

It looks as if one company was a simple paper company and [another]… the one that really did the job. Though it could have been vice versa. Though it doesn’t really matter, as they were both involved and must have known what they were doing.

So in those cases it’s pretty clear those companies were involved in a breach of sanctions and should have been designated as required by pertinent resolutions.

Of course there will have been other entities involved as well. Who was actually the entity in North Korea that was going to receive these goods? Because we never saw the contracts we weren’t really clear either on the Cuban side who was involved. But to have taken action against the shipping company would have been entirely appropriate.

NK News: You mean the North Korean shipping company Ocean Maritime Management?

Yes. Although there were two companies, OMM and the Chong Chon Gang Shipping Company, which looked like it was a paper company.

NK News: The most recent Panel of Experts report said that the Panel was “unconvinced” by Cuba’s claims that the Chong Chon Gang’s cargo was being sent to the DPRK for refurbishment. Can you expand on this? 

More than anything, it was a matter of the condition of the equipment and the way in which it was sent.

To put it this way, if you’re going to be sending your car to the repair shop, you don’t chop it in half first. That would be a pretty stupid way to decide to send it in. Yet that is what they did with the MiGs, they literally chopped the wings off. And of course hid [them] under 10,000 tonnes of sugar.

Again – you wouldn’t send your car to the mechanic’s in that sort of state. Indeed why do you need to send 12 spare engines along at the same time as well?

The way in which (to focus on the MiGs) they had removed the Cuban air force insignia, they had repainted some, but not others. Why on earth go to all that trouble if you’re just sending it for repair and return?

“If you’re going to be sending your car to the repair shop, you don’t chop it in half first”

There are other items as well, that just made no sense. Why on earth would you need to send this? There was a generator that was brand new that hadn’t even been run in yet. Why do you need to send that? I must admit we didn’t actually start it up and test it, but the log books with it indicated that it was in perfectly good working order.

There are a lot of things there that just didn’t seem credible.

NK News: UN member states should report incidents of possible sanction breaches to the Panel of Experts. Is the number of these incident reports decreasing? 

The trouble with the incident reporting, in the last period of the annual basis, there were slightly fewer incident reports, we just couldn’t know from the panel’s perspective, whether this was a temporary blip, or a long term trend.

I don’t know if there have been any further incidents since I left the panel. I haven’t seen any in the newspapers but you wouldn’t necessarily see them in newspapers.

Frankly, I doubt that this is a reflection of the DPRK no longer contravening sanctions, I think it’s a matter of them getting rather cleverer at it. It could be their procurement requirements are changing, or it could be they are finding it more difficult to sell their arms overseas. All those things could be coming together.

That doesn’t mean that the sanctions regime is not needed, it may show that it is actually having an effect, but if I were on the panel still, I think what we should be doing is rather more proactive work, trying to investigate rather more deeply North Korean patterns of ownership overseas, activity overseas, rather than waiting for incident reports. Frankly in the first few years of the Panel there were so many incidents being reported that you didn’t have time to catch your breath and do the proactive work.

NK News: Are North Korean patterns of sanctions evasion becoming more sophisticated? 

It’s possible. [It] could be three issues, one could be procurement requirements are changing. They don’t need to import more stuff for their nuclear or ballistic missile programs. That’s one possibility and we haven’t seen much of that in any case. But they could have indigenized their main requirements.

Secondly it could be that they just aren’t managing to sell their weapons overseas, having lost customers in Myanmar, Libya and places like that. It could be more difficult for them to sell. So there could be less to sell.

Thirdly, they could just be getting cleverer at it.

Most likely if I had to guess it’s a combination of all three and other factors I’m unaware of.

NK News: Have there been incident reports from countries on the East African coast? 

There might well [have been], but that might also be because they don’t know what their actual obligations are. There have been a number of cases in the region, [and it] could well be that they didn’t necessarily appreciate what their obligations are under the sanctions.

Whether they are under reporting it’s hard to say, particularly because one complication in the region is old North Korean arms. North Korea certainly has supplied arms to the region historically, over decades. So one does sometimes get stories of consignments of NK weapons. But if they predate sanctions and have just been in the same place for the last twenty years then they are not a breach.

NK News: Do you have a speculative list of countries that likely under report possible sanction breaches? 

Not particularly. We can have our suspicions as to the sorts of countries that might be interested in trading with North Korea. They could be ones with long historical links, and perhaps not a great deal of money to spend on equipment.

So to find that Cuba still had this trading relationship in military goods with North Korea, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by that.

There could easily be other countries in the African continent where our old relationships going back to the racial struggle days where it would hardly be surprising if North Korea wasn’t trying to sell kit in the region. But whether they are not, we don’t necessarily know.

NK News: Does allowing each member to draw up its own list of ‘luxury goods’ undermine the effectiveness of this sanction?

I think in the end, yes it does. I think the steps taken by the last resolution (2094), to put in an illustrative list was absolutely right and it would have been better to expand that even further, just so it is clear just what is meant by luxury goods. I think that would have been the right thing to have done early on.

I think that the fact that the Security Council had to come this late shows that they realised that there has been a mistake here and they need to have more uniformity around the globe. I think that would make a lot of sense and I think should go beyond the cars, jewellery and yacht.

I’m not saying I know what else it should be, but nonetheless it’s pretty clear it should.

NK News: Do you think China would subscribe to a uniform luxury goods list? 

They signed up to it last time as it were. I think it would be possible for a lot of things. Luxuries sporting goods and things like that are clearly not appropriate for a country of the DPRK’s economic power at the moment.

I’m not really sure what it would be, but I think it would send the right signal and would as you say greatly help enforcement. If countries don’t know what the luxury goods are supposed to be, it’s very hard for them to implement these things.

NK News: In their 2013 report, the Panel recommended further investigation into Syria’s relationship with the DPRK. However, in the latest report, Syria is only briefly mentioned. Was this focus reduced due to a lack of evidence? 

In our bones we felt it was highly likely that there was something going on. But apart from frankly pretty speculative press articles, there was very little hard evidence. The relationship certainly does continue between the DPRK and Syria, I’m pretty sure I’m right in saying that the DPRK embassy in Syria is still active, still has defence attaches, if I recall there is some kind of military assistance, but very hard to pin it down.

We can only put in the report what we feel we can really put our signatures to. Although we have followed on press reports whenever we can, there just isn’t much hard evidence I’m afraid.

NK News: The UK has warmer relations and more leeway when interacting with the DPRK that the U.S. What makes the UK different, and how does you see the country’s role in bringing the North Korea in from the cold?

I would put this the other way round. It isn’t so much why is the UK different, its why is the U.S. different. Having stayed so long in South Korea, and in the United States, to hear that UK has diplomatic relations and even an embassy in North Korea is regarded as somewhat odd, but in fact it isn’t. In fact the odd thing is for countries not to have diplomatic relations.

Seen globally the number of pairings where there aren’t any diplomatic relations is extremely small. There are some countries that don’t with Israel, but very few relationships where there isn’t actually diplomatic relations. The main one that is the case at the moment is the U.S. and North Korea. South Korea and Japan don’t have relationships also, but other countries do.

And of course the UK itself has only had relations for a decade now, but I regard that frankly as what should be the normal situation.

Of course British interests in the North aren’t exactly vast. There are not many British citizens who live there, there’s not much in the way of trade. But nonetheless, it’s recognised that the potential for North Korean programmes to be destabilizing in the region and thereby affecting very serious British interest in the region is really considerable.

“It’s very difficult to have any influence on it from the outside”

I think it’s only right that the UK should be doing whatever it can, to mitigate those risks. Now what you can do of course is at times very hard to see. As the regime has survived since 1945 in a very insular sort of fashion. It’s very difficult to have any influence on it from the outside.

Nonetheless I think it’s still important that the UK and indeed any other governments too should be doing what it can to make clear the DPRK that no country in the world is actually bent on the destruction of Pyongyang, that actually the rest of the world are perfectly reasonable (by and large), composed of reasonable countries that would be happy to have a sensible relationship with North Korea. But it’s North Korea that continues to make that difficult.

So in that respect, trying to ensure that North Koreans as far as they possibly can have a greater understanding of the realities of the international situation. and indeed the realities of their own situation. I think it’s good for the foreign office for being able to make this frankly pretty small investment in an embassy there and in the programs it runs to try to ensure the North Korean officials and the other North Koreans understand the realities of modern day life.

Picture: Wikimedia Commons

It’s possible that North Korea’s methods for evading UN sanctions are becoming increasingly sophisticated, as the number of of reports made to the UN Panel of Experts has decreased, former coordinator of the Panel Martin Uden told NK News in an in-depth interview. “Frankly, I doubt that this [decrease in incident reports] is a reflection of