North Korea has allegedly earned around $30 million after selling fishing rights to China this year, a South Korean lawmaker told local press on Friday.

Lee Wan-young of the ruling Saenuri Party, informed reporters of the claim after attending a scheduled briefing by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) to the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee.

“To secure dollar currency, North Korea has recently sold their fishing rights in the Yellow Sea to China,” conservative South Korean paper, the Choson Ilbo, reported Lee as saying.

According to the report, the deal granted rights for 1,500 Chinese fishing boats to operate in North Korean