A U.S. sanctioned North Korean vessel recently arrived at a bulk port near Dandong coal power station, though appeared to stop broadcasting its location to terrestrial tracking systems shortly after its arrival.

The DPRK-flagged Chol Bong San arrived at a pier located to the west of the larger terminal which is normally the principal port of call for North Korean ships on October 11.

Satellite imagery indicates that the Chinese port is equipped to handle sanctioned commodities like coal and is only a short distance from the Dalian Power Station.

According to Source Watch, the “Huaneng Dalian power station is a 1400 megawatt coal-fired power station … located on the outskirts of Dalian, on the coast of Bohai Bay and comprises four 350MW coal-fired units built in 1988 to 1999.

Satellite photography provided by Google Earth also indicates the power station is directly connected to the port via a type of conveyor belt, which runs to near the location where the Chol Bong San was berthed.

But the North Korean ship was not directly docked next to the conveyor belt, instead taking up a berth where some other types of cargo are also piled.

Imagery from Planet Labs shows a small vessel roughly approximating the Chol Bong San’s size in the same location on October 12, though there is no corresponding vessel broadcast on that date.

The imagery does not appear to show any loading or offloading and the vessel is not in images taken on subsequent days.

The Chol Bong San was designated by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in late 2017, for its ties to a DPRK-company called Korea Rungrado Ryongak Trading.

OFAC designated Rungrado Ryongak and the similarly named Korea Rungrado Shipping Company for “operating in the transportation industry of North Korea.”

But the UN Panel of Experts (PoE) also noted that another company called Rungrado Trading Corporation was involved in shipping SCUD missile parts to Egypt and in numerous breaches of the luxury goods sanctions covering the DPRK.

Member states are prohibited from importing North Korean coal, along with numerous other DPRK-produced raw materials.

But in order to circumvent the restrictions, the DPRK typically shies away from direct deliveries, opting instead to first transfer sanctioned cargos to other vessels at sea.

The new sanctions evasion methods have led to an apparent uptick in unusual North Korean vessel behavior, with DPRK-flagged or associated ships signaling with apparently false vessel identifying information and loitering near Chinese ports without docking.

The trend was also noted by the UN Panel of Experts in their most recent report, who wrote that North Korean ships are loitering near Shanghai, or headed to waters between Vietnam and China to conduct the illicit transfers.

Edited by James Fretwell