[ Yonhap Photo]
UN sanctions aimed at curbing North Korea's nuclear and missile programs have been undermined by "blindness" shown by countries like Namibia to illicit activities by the nuclear-armed country seeking to earn hard currencies through deceptive and evasive tactics, according to a report by 38 North.
Some countries like Namibia are "in disbelief" that awarding military contracts to North Korea could involve sanctioned entities while others including Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates fail to show "basic vigilance" on high-risk North Korean diplomats, Andrea Berger, a senior researcher at the Proliferation and Nuclear Policy team, said in the report published on the website of a US research institute.
Countries like Russia "consciously choose not to investigate possible prohibited activities", she said, citing the 2016 Panel of Experts report on Pyongyang's deceptive and evasive logistical practices, case studies of illicit finance and suspected violations of the arms embargo.
The report offers a noteworthy reminder that blindness to prohibited North Korean activities persists and continues to undermine the sanctions regime, Berger said. "Such blindness comes in multiple forms: naive and negligent, willful and obstructive, and many shades in between."
Namibia is "a particularly striking example", she said, adding that from 2000, many contracts have been awarded to North Korea's state construction firm, Mansudae Overseas, ranging from monuments and a munitions factory to military bases.
"Mansudae's ongoing involvement in the construction of new Namibian military bases is noteworthy, not least because such bases could fall within the definition of prohibited services," she said, adding the North's sanctioned Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation (KOMID) has been involved in the construction of military-related projects in the African country.
KOMID representatives based in Russia and Namibia have traveled frequently to Islamabad and Karachi between December 2012 and October 2015, although UN resolutions urge member states to exert vigilance over activities by North Korean diplomats engaged in illicit activities, she said.
Berger said that Russia has allowed North Korean entities designated under UN resolutions to sell and market controlled machine tools on its territory.
"In short, Russia appears unprepared to cooperate on sanctions investigations and enforcement when the potential indications of a sanctions breach come from open sources", she said. "Russia’s purported blindness to possible North Korean illicit activities facilitated on its territory is clearly willful."
-- NAIVE AND NEGLIGENT FORMS OF BLINDNESS --
Relevant private-sector actors can be "willfully" ignorant of North Korean illicit activity, Berger warned, saying the Panel's report sends a sobering message: "despite a decade of sanctions, the nonproliferation community still has an immense amount of work to do."
"Awareness of the deceptive and evasive practices used by North Korea and its associates must be raised substantially,"she said, demanding information on these tactics must be regularly updated and repeatedly disseminated when North Korea inevitably begins to adapt to the new or modified UN restrictions.
UN resolutions strive to reduce the number of North Korean "safe havens" -- locations where its illicit networks can operate unhindered "because of the ignorance of or cover from the host government".
Berger urged the global nonproliferation community to pay consistent attention to actors who maintain an unacceptable "ignorance is bliss" policy.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
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Park Sae-jin
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