Editors note: This is the third article in a five-part series featuring interviews with former members of the U.N. Panel of Experts. (Part 1 is here | Part 2 is here) | (Part 3 is here) | (Part 4 is here) | (Part 5 is here)

With no new U.N. sanctions or designations issued relating to North Korea since 2017, it appears that the geopolitical appetite to decisively support the Panel of Experts (PoE) is declining.

Some important countries are also increasingly less interested in implementing existing North Korea-related sanctions, which has led to squabbling about evidence.

This has allowed the DPRK to continue acquiring technology and inputs for its missile and nuclear development programs. Furthermore, the impact of what should constitute one of the harshest sanctions regimes in the world is not really being felt in Pyongyang: Gas and food prices and forex rates have all been relatively stable in recent years.

Also, faced with an increasingly sophisticated adversary, the PoE’s work is becoming more and more difficult as the years go by.

What, then, might be some realistic goals for the initiative in the years ahead? To find out answers to this and a lot more – two more interview features are coming in the days ahead – NK Pro spoke to five former members of the Panel to gather their thoughts and analysis.

Experts for the interview series include*:

• John Everard – Former Coordinator of the UN’s DPRK Panel of Experts – U.K.
• Katsu Furukawa – Former expert of the UN’s DPRK Panel of Experts – Japan
• Martin Uden –Former Coordinator of the UN’s DPRK Panel of Experts – U.K.
• Neil Watts – Former expert of the UN’s DPRK Panel of Experts – South Africa
• Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt – Former expert of the UN’s DPRK Panel of Experts – United States

*Please note that Chinese and Russian former members of the Panel declined to take part in all interviews.

NK PRO: Given the deteriorating state of the North Korea sanctions regime, what might be some realistic goals that the PoE could focus on achieving in the years ahead?

These responses have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity and readability.

John Everard: It’s all about implementation, of course.

In a better-organized world, the PoE would be able to accept that some of the sanctions passed by the Security Council are very difficult to enforce and concentrate on the tighter enforcement of others. But the PoE can’t do that. It’s required by its mandate to deal with all the sanctions, regardless.

One particular issue from the early days was the question of luxury goods – inserted at the personal insistence of John Bolton – which was never properly defined. As a result, it became a dead letter, almost from the off. It’s less of a dead letter now, though, because we actually have lists of what luxury goods are. That’s just one egregious example.

I think everybody understands that parts of the sanctions regime work better than others, and the parts are simply being ignored.

In a better-organized world, the PoE would be able to accept that some of the sanctions passed by the Security Council are very difficult to enforce and concentrate on the tighter enforcement of others

Neil Watts: The Panel’s job is to monitor, investigate and analyze non-compliance. It also has to support the Committee in aspects such as providing humanitarian aid and advice to member states that would like to provide aid and equipment to NGOs.

All of this needs to be investigated by the Panel to ensure that whatever equipment they want to bring or activities they want to do inside North Korea do not violate the sanctions. That’s an important role that the Panel plays in terms of confirming whether exemptions should be authorized by the Committee or not on the basis of the activities or the equipment they want to take into North Korea. 

It’s quite clear that the proposal by Russia and China to reduce some of the sanctions in December last year and January this year was a signal that they feel it is time to start lifting sanctions.

I’m not sure of the motives – it could be to incentivize greater rapprochement with North Korea, especially in light of the two meetings Kim Jong Un had with Donald Trump. And they would like to see that gain momentum by incentivizing Kim Jong Un to sort of come out of his shell, as it were. Or, one could feel that they feel that sanctions are not reaching their desired impact or are losing their value in terms of leveraging movement on the nuclear weapons stance of North Korea.

So there are a number of considerations why Russia and China feel that some of the sanctions need to be lifted.

Katsu Furukawa: It’s always important for the U.N. Panel to provide a conclusion – they have to close investigation cases.

To date, the Panel’s reporting has included the publication of names of companies and individuals who are involved in sanctions violations. But that’s not enough. The Panel has to make a clear conclusion for each sanctions violation case concerning who the willing violators are.

Since 2017 especially, I saw many of the Panel’s investigations evolving. But suddenly, the investigation reporting stopped in the subsequent Panel reports, probably because of the changes in the Panel’s personnel. But in each case, the Panel has to draw a clear conclusion and get consensus about who are the real willing violators.

I feel that because there are increasing numbers of sanction violations, there are also increasing numbers of cases that are not conclusively closed by the Panel.

The Panel has to make a clear conclusion for each sanctions violation case concerning who the willing violators are.

From my experience of interacting with multiple government authorities, they do not take law enforcement action unless the Panel clearly makes conclusions. Putting names of sanctions violators in the U.N. Panel report alone is insufficient for law enforcement authorities to take official action.

Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt: A lot depends on the policies that will be pursued by the U.S. post-January, in a new administration. That will of course influence the work of the Panel.

Overall, though, the Panel should focus on where it has a clear advantage. It should focus on, to the extent possible, ensuring that it can have access to corroborating evidence from multiple sources, including member states. I think the Panel has to continue to investigate and report to the extent that it can.

The quality of the evidence has become much more important as well as the number of member states that can provide it and/or corroborate it. Sometimes, it’s not easy to predict what kinds of things will upset certain member states – often it is, but sometimes it’s not, so you have to just keep on investigating and reporting.

However, I think it’s going to get tougher and tougher because the increasing sophistication in evasion of DPRK sanctions means that you have to peel back many more layers of the onion. Layers of identities, aliases, companies and networks of collaborators in many countries are always becoming better at what they do.

[The Panel] should focus on, to the extent possible, ensuring that it can have access to corroborating evidence from multiple sources, including member states.

You now have a combination of this growing ability to hide a link between activities and the DPRK, with member states clamoring for a “smoking gun” every time. And when satellite images do amount to a smoking gun, other reasons are found to dismiss them.

Martin Uden: My feeling is that the PoE has got a clear mandate at the moment – to monitor and enforce the sanctions – and they’ve just got to stick to that. That is really the answer.

Whether that’s sufficient at the end of the day for the Panel members themselves, is an important question. For me, I still felt that I was doing important work.

I should say, during my period, I couldn’t call it magnificently successful because we continued to have tests and clear breaches of sanctions. And I couldn’t say that at that time we had magnificent support from all concerned, including, at times, the United States.

I was frustrated very often in terms of the information we would get from member states. It’s nothing new for the Panel of Experts to find that they are leading the charge, and member states aren’t exactly rushing along behind them.

But I do think that it is realistic for the PoE to stick to their guns, to continue to report breaches as they see them and to build up that body of evidence.

If, as you say, countries are saying that the evidence being forward is based on assumptions and estimations, well, you’ve got to find better evidence in that case. You’ve got to keep trying at that and build up the body of evidence in a way that, eventually, will mean with any change in big power politics it becomes possible to make better progress with the sanctions.

I couldn’t say that at that time we had magnificent support from all concerned, including, at times, the United States.

That said, I’ve got to admit, I have a problem with the idea of the maximum pressure approach. Either it would have managed to put enough pressure on the DPRK government to actually make policy changes – which has not exactly been evident – or it’s something that’s going to wreak much greater pain on the North Korean population. And apparently, that seems to be happening now. So that becomes more of an issue.

How sustainable are these stringent sanctions when they are not actually showing much progress on the political and diplomatic side?

Edited by James Fretwell