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NKorea Seeks ‘Equilibrium’ With US, Says Nuclear Capability Nearly Complete

September 16, 2017

NKorea Seeks ‘Equilibrium’ With US, Says Nuclear Capability Nearly Complete, Newsmax, AP, September 16, 2017

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a liberal who initially pushed for talks with North Korea, said its tests currently make dialogue “impossible.”

“If North Korea provokes us or our allies, we have the strength to smash the attempt at an early stage and inflict a level of damage it would be impossible to recover from,” said Moon, who ordered his military to conduct a live-fire ballistic missile drill in response to the North Korean launch.

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country is nearing its goal of “equilibrium” in military force with the United States, as the United Nations Security Council strongly condemned the North’s “highly provocative” ballistic missile launch over Japan on Friday.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency carried Kim’s comments on Saturday — a day after U.S. and South Korean militaries detected the missile launch from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

It traveled 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) as it passed over the Japanese island of Hokkaido before landing in the northern Pacific Ocean. It was the country’s longest-ever test flight of a ballistic missile.

The North has confirmed the missile as an intermediate range Hwasong-12, the same model launched over Japan on Aug. 29.

Under Kim’s watch, North Korea has maintained a torrid pace in weapons tests, including its most powerful nuclear test to date on Sept. 3 and two July flight tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike deep into the U.S. mainland when perfected.

The increasingly frequent and aggressive tests have added to outside fears that the North is closer than ever to building a military arsenal that could viably target the U.S. and its allies in Asia. The tests, which could potentially make launches over Japan an accepted norm, are also seen as North Korea’s attempt to win greater military freedom in the region and raise doubts in Seoul and Tokyo that Washington would risk the annihilation of a U.S. city to protect them.

The KCNA said Kim expressed great satisfaction over the launch, which he said verified the “combat efficiency and reliability” of the missile and the success of efforts to increase its power.

While the English version of the report was less straightforward, the Korean version quoted Kim as declaring the missile as operationally ready. He vowed to complete his nuclear weapons program in the face of strengthening international sanctions, the agency said.

Photos published by North Korea’s state media showed the missile being fired from a truck-mounted launcher and a smiling Kim clapping and raising his fist while celebrating from an observation point. It was the first time North Korea showed the missile being launched directly from a vehicle, which experts said indicated confidence about the mobility and reliability of the system. In previous tests, North Korea used trucks to transport and erect the Hwasong-12s, but moved the missiles on separate firing tables before launching them.

The U.N. Security Council accused North Korea of undermining regional peace and security by launching its latest missile over Japan and said its nuclear and missile tests “have caused grave security concerns around the world” and threaten all 193 U.N. member states.

Kim also said the country, despite “limitless” international sanctions, has nearly completed the building of its nuclear weapons force and called for “all-state efforts” to reach the goal and obtain a “capacity for nuclear counterattack the U.S. cannot cope with.”

“As recognized by the whole world, we have made all these achievements despite the U.N. sanctions that have lasted for decades,” the agency quoted Kim as saying.

Kim said the country’s final goal “is to establish the equilibrium of real force with the U.S. and make the U.S. rulers dare not talk about military option for the DPRK,” referring to North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

He indicated that more missile tests would be forthcoming, saying that all future drills should be “meaningful and practical ones for increasing the combat power of the nuclear force” to establish an order in the deployment of nuclear warheads for “actual war.”

Prior to the launches over Japan, North Korea had threatened to fire a salvo of Hwasong-12s toward Guam, the U.S. Pacific island territory and military hub the North has called an “advanced base of invasion.”

The Security Council stressed in a statement after a closed-door emergency meeting that all countries must “fully, comprehensively and immediately” implement all U.N. sanctions.

Japan’s U.N. Ambassador Koro Bessho called the missile launch an “outrageous act” that is not only a threat to Japan’s security but a threat to the whole world.

Bessho and the British, French and Swedish ambassadors demanded that all sanctions be implemented.

Calling the latest launch a “terrible, egregious, illegal, provocative reckless act,” Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said North Korea’s largest trading partners and closest links — a clear reference to China — must “demonstrate that they are doing everything in their power to implement the sanctions of the Security Council and to encourage the North Korean regime to change course.”

France’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country is ready to work on tougher U.N. and EU measures to convince Pyongyang that there is no interest in an escalation, and to bring it to the negotiating table.

Friday’s launch followed North Korea’s sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3 in what it described as a detonation of a thermonuclear weapon built for its developmental ICBMs.

The Hwasong-12 and the Hwasong-14 were initially fired at highly lofted angles to reduce their range and avoid neighboring countries. The two Hwasong-12 launches over Japan indicate North Korea is moving toward using angles close to operational to evaluate whether its warheads can survive the harsh conditions of atmospheric re-entry and detonate properly.

While some experts believe North Korea would need to conduct more tests to confirm Hwasong-12’s accuracy and reliability, Kim Jong Un’s latest comments indicate the country would soon move toward mass producing the missiles for operational deployment, said Kim Dong-yub, an analyst at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies. He also said that the North is likely planning similar test launches of its Hwasong-14 ICBM.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a liberal who initially pushed for talks with North Korea, said its tests currently make dialogue “impossible.”

“If North Korea provokes us or our allies, we have the strength to smash the attempt at an early stage and inflict a level of damage it would be impossible to recover from,” said Moon, who ordered his military to conduct a live-fire ballistic missile drill in response to the North Korean launch.

Categories: North Korea - military options, North Korea - negotiations, North Korea sanctions, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, South Korean responses to North Korean threat
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UNSCR 2375: What Just Happened Here?

September 16, 2017

UNSCR 2375: What Just Happened Here? 38 North, , September 15, 2017

(This is about the watered-down UN Security Council resolution imposing more sanctions on North Korea. Essentially, the Security Council poked North Korea with a feather. North Korea’s response was probably to giggle. Please see also, H.R. McMaster: ‘There is a military option’ for North Korea and my parenthetical comment there about China — DM)

The bigger question is why the US went into this round of sanctions looking like it was ready to call China’s bluff by publicly putting forward a resolution that Beijing would have to veto. It appeared that Washington may have chosen to use the draft resolution as a way to justify applying secondary sanctions widely once the Chinese and/or Russians vetoed the draft. Instead, the US opted (wisely in this author’s view) to maintain Council and P-5 unity. But in terms of public perception, it now it appears to have blinked in the face of Chinese obstruction. It would be interesting to know what arrangements were made between the two capitals and whether this is an indicator of quiet Chinese action that will increase pressure on Pyongyang out of public view. There are reports, which this author cannot confirm, that several large state owned Chinese banks are winding up their North Korean operations. If it is not the case that more US-Chinese cooperation is going on behind the scenes, this author is left to wonder why the US put so much on the table publicly only to walk away with so little.

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On Monday evening, the United Nations Security Council quickly and unanimously passed another sanctions resolution against North Korea in a rapid response to its sixth—and strongest—nuclear weapons test just days earlier. In the context of past international sanctions and diplomatic actions in dealing with the North Korean nuclear and missile programs one could have applauded the rapid and unanimous action that will increase the economic price North Korea pays for its actions. After all, the resolution did not have to suffer the usual lengthy US-PRC and P-5 negotiations that have frequently delayed or even halted past UNSC responses. But, because the US released a much tougher draft and appeared to be headed towards a show down with Russia and China in the Council, outside observers are scratching their heads a bit over what was achieved and whether the US “won” or “lost” on the resolution. It looks like the US backed down, but it is possible there is more going on behind the scenes. Certainly the resolution itself is unlikely to be decisive.

For those who had hoped the US had finally gotten fed up with Chinese and Russian efforts to shield Pyongyang from regime-threatening pressure and would present them with a choice of accepting a tough resolution in New York or dealing with draconian secondary sanctions aimed at Beijing and Moscow, this resolution is bad news. For those who feared a rupture of P-5 unity, the eruption of a US-China trade war to overshadow the North Korea crisis and an end to any reasonable path to a diplomatic solution to the crisis, the resolution puts those bad outcomes off for another day. From a technical point of view, the resolution marginally ratchets up pressure on Pyongyang—although far less than the resolution’s authors would have us think.

The most interesting question—one this author is in no position to answer—is what happened between Washington and Beijing that shifted the resolution from one of confrontation to one of minor evolution in sanctions. As we look now to crafting a response to North Korea’s latest provocation—a second test flight of the Hwasong-12 over Japanese territory—it is important to know if UNSCR 2375 reflected some new understanding of a way forward shared by Washington and Beijing. If not, it is unclear what just happened here.

What Does The UNSCR Do?

The press has already reported on the key components of the resolution. These include:

  • New language on interdiction of North Korean ships (Operative Paragraphs 7-12);
  • A cap on petroleum and refined product imports to North Korea and a ban on natural gas imports (Operative Paragraphs 13-15);
  • A sun setting of all North Korean labor export arrangements and a reduction of most joint ventures (Operative Paragraphs 17-18); and
  • A ban on North Korean textile exports (Operative Paragraph 16).

It is unlikely that anything in these provisions will break the back of the North Korean regime. Indeed, while the provisions on petroleum and refined product may build a base for future action, the remaining sanctions are unlikely to do very much at all, in and of themselves, to increase pain on the DPRK.

Take, for example, the interdiction language. While the language may increase psychological pressure on that floating crap game that is the international system of providing flags of convenience to questionable shipping operators, it gives no new authority to those interested in halting illegal North Korean shipments of conventional arms, missiles, missile production equipment, or chemical weapons precursors to clients in the Middle East and Africa. The US has long believed it already had authority under international law to board and inspect vessels on the high seas if it had sound reasons to suspect they were carrying material prohibited by UN Security Council Resolutions, so long as the state flagging the vessel gave its permission. This new resolution simply restates what already exists under international law. It is a far cry from what the US proposed in its draft, which would have given member states the right to use force to board and inspect vessels suspected of carrying prohibited cargo under authority of the UN Charter. While that draft provision gave many of us pause, given the current level of tensions, it would have had the virtue of giving the US and others authority to deal with North Korea’s use of long-distance cargo ships delivering prohibited goods to a number of African and Middle Eastern clients who currently refuse to shut down their prohibited arms, missile and chemical weapons deals with Pyongyang. This resolution will not.

Similarly, the ban on textile exports looks like it will hit the DPRK hard. Trade statistics indicate North Korea earns hundreds of millions of dollars on textile exports. This, unfortunately, is likely an economic mirage. In fact, the North Korean textile trade is largely a labor export without moving the laborers. Garment manufacture is driven by one central factor: labor costs. Chinese manufacturers send production machinery, cloth and even zippers and buttons to North Korea and allow cheap, abused North Korean workers to assemble garments that are then re-exported to China. So while statistics may show hundreds of millions of dollars of textile exports, they should also show machinery and textile imports of significant value. The only real foreign exchange earnings involved for North Korea, therefore, will be the wages of the North Korean workers and the payments to their employers—far less than the hundreds of millions of dollars of paper earnings. If enforced, it is likely the textile trade with China will end as Chinese garment manufacturers find another Asian country with cheap labor to use, but the net economic impact on North Korea will be not very great.

The sun setting of true labor exports could—if it were enforceable—have a significant impact on North Korea’s foreign exchange earnings. However, it—like all foreign labor arrangements—is quite hard to enforce. One need only ask oneself how many foreign workers are harvesting crops or doing home construction in the US or working in low level service jobs in Europe to know how hard it will be to enforce this ban. (Estimates vary by millions of workers in both cases.) Moreover, the US and Europe have competent and honest customs and immigration services; the same cannot necessarily be said for Russia, China or the Middle East where most North Korean workers operate. Sadly, while this provision in the resolution may slow down the North’s earnings from the uncompensated labor of its people, it is more likely to force the business underground so that the workers may be subject to even greater abuse. At least the cost of abusing these workers will rise as their employers will likely have to make significant payoffs to various inspectors to have them look the other way when it comes to paperwork like work authorizations.

Much the same could be written about joint ventures. However, it may well be that this is one area where increased sanctions scrutiny will persuade reputable firms to look to less risky markets for investment opportunities. This is especially the case if the US is serious about ramping up its use of secondary sanctions against Chinese investors.

The headline sanction in the resolution, of course, involved oil and refined petroleum products. The provisions in the resolution fall far short of a ban on oil supply. They seek to impose a cap on petroleum and perhaps a cut in refined product imports. But the convoluted language of Operative Paragraph 14 indicates that the drafters and those they were trying to persuade had to sacrifice clarity for comity in order to get consensus language. Since no one really knows how much petroleum or refined product the DPRK is importing (estimates vary by over 20 percent between US and IEA statistics for instance), the most important result of this provision will be to require suppliers to report on their exports of refined product. (Sadly, crude shipments have no such reporting requirement so the cap on shipments of crude is really on the honor system.)  It will be interesting to see who is willing to step up and state they are in the refined product business with North Korea. Suppliers have an incentive to do so since future exports will be based on past exports. (Of course, they also have a disincentive since some oil is possibly being used as compensation for illegal North Korean exports of missiles, chemical weapons precursors or conventional arms.)

At a minimum, the sanction will thus give us greater clarity on the refined product issue. Will the caps in the resolution pinch the DPRK? It is unclear. There are some reports that the DPRK is already having difficulty importing refined product, perhaps because it cannot find financial channels with which to pay for the imports. Other experts insist the DPRK has sufficient stockpiles to ride out sanctions for the short and medium term and that it could substitute coal (of which it will have large amounts now that exports are banned) for some of its oil needs. The DPRK has shown vulnerability to heavy fuel oil shortages in the past. But, it also has shown a hard hearted willingness to let much of its population freeze in the dark if that is what it takes to keep gas in the fuel tanks of the leadership’s Mercedes. The best way to look at this provision is as a marker for possible future bans on oil supply.

Bigger Picture

The bigger question is why the US went into this round of sanctions looking like it was ready to call China’s bluff by publicly putting forward a resolution that Beijing would have to veto. It appeared that Washington may have chosen to use the draft resolution as a way to justify applying secondary sanctions widely once the Chinese and/or Russians vetoed the draft. Instead, the US opted (wisely in this author’s view) to maintain Council and P-5 unity. But in terms of public perception, it now it appears to have blinked in the face of Chinese obstruction. It would be interesting to know what arrangements were made between the two capitals and whether this is an indicator of quiet Chinese action that will increase pressure on Pyongyang out of public view. There are reports, which this author cannot confirm, that several large state owned Chinese banks are winding up their North Korean operations. If it is not the case that more US-Chinese cooperation is going on behind the scenes, this author is left to wonder why the US put so much on the table publicly only to walk away with so little.

Observers of this long-running crisis should take some heart that by maintaining Council—particularly P5—unity that there are still possibilities for US-Chinese cooperation to end this crisis diplomatically. They should be less impressed by UNSCR 2375’s potential for immediate impact.

Categories: China - North Korea sanctions evasion, China and North Korea, North Korea sanctions, North Korean missile over Japan, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, UN Security Council and North Korea
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H.R. McMaster: ‘There is a military option’ for North Korea

September 15, 2017

H.R. McMaster: ‘There is a military option’ for North Korea, Washington Examiner, Joel Gehrke , September 15, 2017

(In other news, China has said it opposes North Korea’s new missile activity and 

the essence of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue is a security issue and the crux is the disagreements between the DPRK and the United States.

“China is neither the focus of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, nor the core to resolving the issue. Neither is it the propellent of the current tensions,” she said, urging parties directly concerned to take up their due responsibilities.

Translation: It’s your problem; deal with it as you want but don’t do anything we won’t like. — DM)

President Trump’s top national security aide said Friday that there is a military option for handling North Korea’s missile and nuclear testing, even though it’s an option the Trump administration does not want to employ.

“There is a military option,” White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said at the White House. “Now, it’s not what we would prefer to do. So, what we have to do is call on all nations, call on everyone to do everything we can to address this global problem short of war. So, that is implementing now these significant sanctions that have just now gone into place. And it is convincing everyone to do everything that they can — and that it’s in their interest to do it.”

But McMaster acknowledged that the clock is ticking with each provocative test North Korea runs.

“We’re out of time,” McMaster said. “We’ve been kicking the can down the road, and we’re out of road.”

McMaster was joined at the White House by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who agreed that the UN is running out of options when it comes to imposing new economic sanctions.

“There’s not a whole lot the Security Council is going to be able to do from here,” Haley said.

Haley’s comments suggest that she won’t revive an attempt to push an oil embargo through the U.N. Security Council, after China and Russia opposed the measure last week. Instead, she argued that the resolution which passed instead of the more-stringent embargo would be a strong deterrent to the regime if it is implemented effectively.

“If you look at the resolutions that have passed over the last month, the two of them, they cut 30 percent of their oil, they banned all the laborers, they based 90 percent of the exports, they banned joint ventures,” Haley said. “in the words of North Korea, we’ve strangled their economic situation at this point.”

McMaster said the sanctions will take time to have a maximum affect, but North Korea’s decision to launch yet another ballistic missile over Japan put renewed urgency in his public message. That’s an apparent warning to Russia and China, both of which oppose additional U.S. military buildups in the Asia-Pacific region.

Their comments came one day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on China to implement the oil embargo unilaterally.

“China supplies essentially all of North Korea’s oil,” Tillerson told reporters in London. “I am hopeful that China — as a great country, a world power — will decide on their own and will take it upon themselves to use that very powerful tool of oil supply to persuade North Korea to reconsider its current path towards weapons development, to reconsider its approach to dialogue and negotiations in the future.”

Categories: China and North Korea, McMaster, North Korea - military options, North Korean missile over Japan, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes
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Second North Korean missile over Japan

September 15, 2017

Second North Korean missile over Japan, DEBKAfile, September 15, 2017

The Trump administration’s response did not indicate that any action was afoot. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis spoke of a reckless action that put millions of Japanese in duck and cover mode, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson again called on China and Russia to restrain Pyongyang.

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For the second time in a month, North Korea fired a ballistic missile over northern Japan early on Friday, Sept. 15. This one was launched from a point near the country’s main international airport in the district of Sunan, where the North Korean capital of Pyongyang is also located. It reached an altitude of 770km, flying about 3,700km before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean and exploding.

On Sept. 3, North Korea exploded its sixth and most powerful nuclear bomb.

The US Pacific Command said its initial assessment indicated that North Korea had fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile. There were conflicting reports from Japan on the type of missile fired, indicating a certain lack of trust between Tokyo and Washington. Some Japanese sources asserted that it was a long-range ballistic missile whose range was longer than the distance between North Korea and Guam, the island holding big US bases which Kim Jong-un had threatened to hit.

The latest missile to fly over their heads triggered sirens on Japan’s eastern island of Hokkado sending residents rushing to shelters.

Exactly 90 minutes after the launch, a North Korean Air Koryo flight 151 took off from Pyongyang for Beijing apparently signifying that shooting missiles was not an extraordinary event for the North Korean ruler.

South Korea responded with a live fire drill that included a missile launch which the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said was capable of striking Sunan launch pad from which the latest North Korean missile was test-fired.

The Trump administration’s response did not indicate that any action was afoot. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis spoke of a reckless action that put millions of Japanese in duck and cover mode, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson again called on China and Russia to restrain Pyongyang.

Categories: North Korean missile over Japan, North Korean missiles
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China Sold Trucks Used With North Korean Missiles

September 14, 2017

China Sold Trucks Used With North Korean Missiles, Washington Free Beacon, , September 14, 2017

(Please see also, What if South Korea acted like North Korea? — DM)

KN-11 launcher

The UN panel included a vague warning to China to stop its the missile-related transfers.

“The panel recalls and reaffirms its recommendation to member states on enhanced vigilance over the export of commercial vehicles that could be converted for military use,” the report said.

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Chinese military support to North Korea’s missile programs included transfers of rocket transporters, according to a new report by a United Nations panel of experts.

The report by the expert panel of the UN Security Council identified Chinese-origin trucks shown in a military parade last April carrying China’s new KN-11 submarine-launched ballistic missile.

“The trucks carried the ‘Sinotruk’ logo on the fuel tank and shared some identical features with the Sinotruk Howo 6×6 series trucks shown at the 10 October 2015 military parade,” the report said.

It is the second significant transfer of strategic missile technology from China identified by the panel.

In June 2013 the panel revealed the sale by China in 2011 of six to eight transporter erector launchers, known as TELs, that are now part of North Korea’s first road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile system, the KN-08.

China claimed the KN-08 TEL vehicles were sold as lumber haulers. However, analysts said the 16-wheel launchers are too wide for logging roads. The launchers are made by the Sanjiang Special Truck Co. of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC).

An earlier UN report in April said Chinese electronic components were found in debris of a North Korean missile test that landed in the Sea of Japan in 2016.

The latest disclosure on Chinese military assistance to North Korea comes amid reports the regime of Kim Jong Un is rapidly developing long-range nuclear missiles while stepping up threats to fire them at American cities and territory.

Rep. Robert Pittenger (R., N.C.) said the report on Chinese support shows that China has not been a good faith partner to the United States on North Korea.

“We must continue to pressure the Chinese, via any means necessary, to ensure they correct their actions related to North Korea, human rights, illegal maritime claims, and a variety of other related national security concerns,” Pittenger said.

Rick Fisher, a military affairs analyst, said the Chinese assistance increased the threat to the United States.

“Let’s be clear, North Korea’s is able to wage surprise offensive nuclear strikes against the United States only because China has supplied the means for North Korea’s missiles to be mobile, to reach launch positions before the United States can strike them,” Fisher said.

“This is really is no less an outrage than Nikita Khrushchev’s supplying nuclear missiles to Fidel Castro’s Cuba,” he said. “Yet for over four years President Obama did not once publicly mention this Chinese outrage, and so far, neither has President Trump.”

Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the report on Sinotruk vehicles carrying KN-11s provides new evidence of China’s covert role in assisting Pyongyang’s missile launch systems.

Other Chinese vehicles spotted with missiles in the April parade include what appeared to be a Sinotruk A7 tractor-trailer cab, seen carrying a new, unidentified North Korean medium-range missile. Mobile 300-millimeter precision-guided artillery rockets also were seen on the same Sinotruk vehicle as the KN-11. The artillery rockets were first paraded in 2015 and the Sinotruk carriers appeared upgraded in the April procession with a hardened grille.

The Chinese trucks were shown in videos and photos published by North Korean state media.

“Via Sinotruk, China is enabling North Korea to build larger tractor-trailer style TELs that in the future could perhaps transport multiple-warhead variants of its large, solid fuel ICBM,” said Fisher.

“Mobility will be crucial to the missions of North Korea’s new, large, solid-fuel ICBMs.”

Neither Sinotruk nor CASIC were included in recent sanctions announced by the Treasury Department imposed on 10 Chinese and Russian companies involved in illicit North Korean trade.

The UN report outlined some of the advances made by the North Koreans, including the first flight tests in February and July of new long-range missiles and new rocket engines, as well as the flight test of a Scud variant with a maneuvering warhead.

Maneuvering warheads are more difficult to track and shoot down with anti-missile interceptors.

The recent missile developments represent “a significant expansion and diversification of [North Korea] programs.”

“These new systems will allow the country to achieve greater range, responsiveness, reliability, and penetrating capabilities,” the report said.

The report said the second long-range Hwasong-14 ICBM tested on July 28 was “an improved version” of the missile tested on July 4.

The UN panel included a vague warning to China to stop its the missile-related transfers.

“The panel recalls and reaffirms its recommendation to member states on enhanced vigilance over the export of commercial vehicles that could be converted for military use,” the report said.

The UN also was urged to add the purchaser of the trucks, the Korea Daesong General Trading Corp., also known as the Korea Daesong Trading Co. No. 11, to be added to the list of sanctioned companies. A second company, Korea Kumsan Trading Corp., also was recommended for sanctions.

The report says the Chinese stated in response to UN inquiries that the missile carriers appeared similar to those made by the China National Heavy Duty Truck Group Co. (CNHTC) Ltd., also known as Sinotruk, that were exported to North Korea between 2010 and 2014.

According to the report, the Chinese defended the transfers as not prohibited under the Security Council embargo.

“Furthermore, in the sales contract, CHNTC explicitly requested the buyer to ensure the civilian use of the trucks,” the Chinese said.

China then claimed it could not confirm that the trucks seen in the parade, bearing the mark “Sinotruk” on the fuel tank, were produced by the Chinese companies because Beijing was not provided the vehicle identification numbers.

The report was published on Sept. 5, two days after Pyongyang detonated a large underground nuclear explosion. The report does not mention the nuclear test, North Korea’s sixth test blast.

The Security Council on Saturday voted to impose additional sanctions on North Korea, including a ban on Pyongyang’s largest export, coal.

However, the experts’ report said North Korea has easily evaded China’s restriction of coal purchases from North Korea.

North Korea “continued to violate sectoral sanctions through the export of almost all of the commodities prohibited in the [UN] resolutions, generating at least $270 million in revenue during the reporting period,” the report said.

After China suspended coal import in February, North Korea “has been rerouting coal to other member states including Malaysia and Vietnam, and has shipped coal through third countries,” the report said.

“The panel’s investigations reveal that the country is deliberately using indirect channels to export prohibited commodities, evading sanctions.”

To evade financial sanctions, Pyongyang stationed agents abroad that were able to conduct financial transactions for North Korean entities.

“Financial institutions in numerous member states wittingly and unwittingly have provided correspondent banking services to front companies and individuals of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea engaged in prohibited activities,” the report said.

China was not named as the member state guilty of facilitating banking services for the North Koreans.

The report notes that North Korea “has made significant technological progress” in advancing its weapons of mass of destruction despite sanctions.

“The country also continues to flout the arms embargo and robust financial and sectoral sanctions, showing that as the sanctions regime expands, so does the scope of evasion,” the report said.

“For the first time in the history of the sanctions regime against the country, the use of a chemical warfare agent was reported by Malaysia, which accused [North Korea] of using VX [nerve agent] in the February 2017 assassination of Kim Jong Nam, reported to be Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, in Kuala Lumpur.”

Categories: China and North Korea, North Korea sanctions, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, UN and China, UN and North Korea
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What if South Korea acted like North Korea?

September 14, 2017

What if South Korea acted like North Korea? Washinton Times, Victor Davis Hanson, September 13, 2017

(One of VDH’s best articles, a thought experiment. — DM)

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Visitors watch the North side from the unification observatory in Paju, South Korea, Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017. South Korea said Wednesday it conducted its first live-fire drill for an advanced air-launched cruise missile it says will strengthen its pre-emptive strike.

[I]f China were in America’s position, we would have likely witnessed a tragically destructive war a long time ago.

China should make the necessary corrections now, before things get even worse.

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Think of the Korean Peninsula turned upside down.

Imagine if there were a South Korean dictatorship that had been in power, as a client of the United States since 1953.

Imagine also that contemporary South Korea was not the rich, democratic home of Kia and Samsung. Instead, envision it as an unfree, pre-industrialized and impoverished failed state, much like North Korea.

Further envision that the U.S. had delivered financial aid and military assistance to this outlaw regime, which led to Seoul possessing several nuclear weapons and a fleet of long-range missiles.

Next, picture this rogue South Korean dictatorship serially threatening to incinerate its neighbor, North Korea — and imagine that North Korea was ruled not by the Kim dynasty, but by a benign government without nuclear weapons.

Also assume that the South Korean dictatorship would periodically promise to wipe out Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. The implicit message to the Chinese would be that the impoverished South Koreans were so crazy that they didn’t care whether they, too, went up in smoke — as long a dozen of their nuclear-tipped missiles could blow up Chinese cities and paralyze the second-largest economy in the world. Assume that these South Korean threats had been going on without consequences for over a decade.

Finally, in such a fantasy scenario, what if the United States falsely claimed ignorance of much of its South Korean client’s nuclear capability and threats. America instead would plead that it regretted the growing tension and the reckless reactions of China to the nuclear threats against it. Washington would lecture China that the crisis was due in part to its support for its North Korean ally.

For effect, the United States would occasionally issue declarations of regret and concern over the situation — even as it warned China not to do anything to provoke America’s provocateur ally.

In such a fantasy, American security experts and military planners would gleefully factor a roguish nuclear South Korea into U.S. deterrent strategy. The Pentagon would privately collude with the South Korean dictatorship to keep the Chinese occupied and rattled, while the U.S. upped shipments of military weaponry to Seoul and overlooked its thermonuclear upgrades.

The American military would be delighted that China would be tied down by having an unhinged nuclear dictatorship on its borders, one that periodically threatened to kill millions of Chinese. South Korea would up the ante of its bluster by occasionally test-launching missiles in the direction of its neighbor.

Question: How long would China tolerate having weapons of mass destruction pointed at its major cities by an unbalanced tyrannical regime?

In response, would Beijing threaten a nuclear Seoul with a preemptory military strike, even though the Chinese would know that Seoul could first do a lot of nuclear damage?

Would China conclude that the United States was the real guilty party because it tacitly sanctioned South Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons?

Would China then warn the U.S. to pressure Seoul to disarm?

Would Beijing cease all trade with America?

Would China boycott, embargo or blockade South Korea?

Would China be furious that after ensuring that its own client, North Korea, remained non-nuclear and played by the rules, America had deliberately done exactly the opposite: empowering its dictatorial client, South Korea, to become a nuclear power in order to threaten China?

In other words, if China and North Korea found themselves in the same respective positions of current America and South Korea, the world may well have already seen a preemptive Chinese attack on Seoul to remove its nuclear capability.

The international community would already have seen China expel the conniving Americans from Chinese embassies, cut trade with the U.S., disrupt American banks and threaten the use of force against the U.S. mainland.

The truth of the North Korea missile crisis is not the boilerplate assumption that China is the key to the solution, but rather that China is by design the root of the problem.

China did not fail to realize that North Korea was developing a nuclear arsenal. Rather, it calculated that North Koreawould do exactly what it is now doing, and that such nuclear roguery would serve China’s strategic interests both on the Korean peninsula and in its rivalries with the United States and with America’s allies in Asia.

In other words, if China were in America’s position, we would have likely witnessed a tragically destructive war a long time ago.

China should make the necessary corrections now, before things get even worse.

• Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Categories: America and South Korea, China and North Korea, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, South Korea
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U.S. Threatens to Cutoff China, Russia for Undermining Sanctions Against North Korea

September 12, 2017

U.S. Threatens to Cutoff China, Russia for Undermining Sanctions Against North Korea, Washington Free Beacon, , September 12, 2017

(Please see also, UN Passes Mega-Ultra Toughest-Ever North Korea Sanctions, Again.– DM)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un attends a meeting with a committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea about the test of a hydrogen bomb / Getty Images

“Unfortunately, I cannot tell the committee today that we’ve seen sufficient evidence of China’s willingness to truly shut down North Korea’s revenue flows, to expunge North Korean illicit actors from its banking system, or to expel the various North Korean middlemen and brokers who are continuing to establish webs of front companies,” he said.

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The Trump administration on Tuesday threatened to cut off from the U.S. financial system Chinese and Russian companies helping North Korea smuggle coal overseas to circumvent international sanctions on Pyongyang’s nuclear activities.

Marshall Billingslea, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing, provided Congress with intelligence images mapping North Korea’s illicit shipping networks used to mask the origin of exported coal to China and Russia.

The images appear to expose China and Russia’s covert hand in undermining international pressure on the Kim Jong Un regime to give up its nuclear ambitions, despite the two nations voting publicly on several occasions at the United Nations Security Council to strengthen sanctions.

“North Korea has been living under United Nations sanctions for over a decade and it has nevertheless made significant strides toward its goal of building a nuclear tipped ICBM,” Billingslea testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, referring to the regime’s pursuit of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States mainland.

“I urge anyone in the financial services industry who might be implicated in the establishment of shell or front companies for [North Korea], and anyone who is aware of such entities, to come forward with that information now, before they find themselves swept up in our net,” he said.

The Treasury Department estimates North Korean coal shipments bring in more than $1 billion in annual revenue for the regime, in part enabling Kim Jong Un to generate income used to fund ballistic missile and nuclear programs. Though the UN Security Council over the past month has passed two separate sanctions packages targeting North Korea’s coal industry, illicit coal-smuggling networks through China and Russia have watered down the impact, according to the Trump administration.

Citing the intelligence images provided to Congress on Tuesday, Billingslea said North Korean shipping vessels routinely shut off their transponders in violation of international maritime law to avoid detection as they move from North Korea into Chinese or Russian ports to offload sanctioned coal.

The Treasury Department is also tracking North Korea’s effort to penetrate the international financial system through shell companies based in China and Russia to help conceal the regime’s overseas footprint. Billingslea warned the Trump administration will punish any company in violation of UN sanctions by choking it off from the U.S. financial market.

Though he lauded China for supporting a recent round of UN sanctions, he said Beijing has not yet shown it is serious about cutting off North Korean funding.

“Unfortunately, I cannot tell the committee today that we’ve seen sufficient evidence of China’s willingness to truly shut down North Korea’s revenue flows, to expunge North Korean illicit actors from its banking system, or to expel the various North Korean middlemen and brokers who are continuing to establish webs of front companies,” he said.

Categories: China - North Korea sanctions evasion, North Korea - our past failures, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Russia - North Korea sanctions evasion, Trump and China, Trump and North Korea, Trump and Russia
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UN Security Council passes new sanctions against North Korea

September 12, 2017

UN Security Council passes new sanctions against North Korea, Fox Business News via YouTube, September 11, 2017

As noted in the blurb beneath the video,

Lt. Col. Michael Waltz (Ret.) and Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney on the U.N. implementing new sanctions against North Korea.

Categories: China and North Korea, Japan and North Korea, North Korea - military options, North Korea sanctions, North korean EMP attack, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, North Korean satellites, South Korean responses to North Korean threat, UN Security Council
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FULL MEASURE: September 10, 2017 – Korean Conflict

September 11, 2017

FULL MEASURE: September 10, 2017 – Korean Conflict via YouTube, September 10, 2017

 

Categories: Mattis on North Korea, North Korean H Bomb test, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, South Korea
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16 Years Later: Lessons Put into Practice?

September 11, 2017

16 Years Later: Lessons Put into Practice? Gatestone Institute, John R. Bolton, September 11, 2017

Sept. 11 should be more than just a few moments of silence to remember the Twin Towers falling, the burning Pentagon and the inspiring heroism of regular Americans in bringing down United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa. We should also seriously consider today’s global threats. Those who made America an exceptional country did so by confronting reality and overcoming it, not by ignoring it.

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Today marks the 16th anniversary of al-Qaida’s 9/11 attacks. We learned much that tragic day, at enormous human and material cost. Perilously, however, America has already forgotten many of Sept. 11’s lessons.

The radical Islamicist ideology manifested that day has neither receded nor “moderated” as many naive Westerners predicted. Neither has the ideology’s hatred for America or its inclination to conduct terrorist attacks. Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution brought radical Islam to the contemporary world’s attention, and it is no less malevolent today than when it seized our Tehran embassy, holding U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days.

The Taliban, which provided al-Qaida sanctuary to prepare the 9/11 attacks, threaten to retake control in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida persists and may even be growing worldwide.

While ISIS’s caliphate in Syria and Iraq will not survive much longer, countries across North Africa and the Middle East (“MENA”) have destabilized or fractured entirely. Syria and Iraq have ceased to exist functionally, and Libya, Somalia and Yemen have descended into chaos. Pakistan, an unstable nuclear-weapons state, could fall to radicals under many easily predictable scenarios.

The terrorist threat is compounded by nuclear proliferation. Pakistan has scores of nuclear weapons, and Iran’s program continues unhindered. North Korea has now conducted its sixth, and likely thermonuclear, nuclear test, and its ballistic missiles are near to being able to hit targets across the continental United States. Pyongyang leads the rogue’s gallery of would-be nuclear powers, and is perfectly capable of selling its technologies and weapons to anyone with hard currency.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, he ignored these growing threats and disparaged those who warned against them. His legacy is terrorist attacks throughout Europe and America, and a blindness to the threat that encouraged Europe to accept a huge influx of economic migrants from the MENA region, whose numbers included potentially thousands of already-committed terrorists.

IGNORING NORTH KOREA

Obama also ignored North Korea, affording it one of an aspiring proliferator’s most precious assets: time. Time is what a would-be nuclear state needs to master the complex scientific and technological problems it must overcome to create nuclear weapons.

And, in a dangerous unforced error that could be considered perfidious if it weren’t so foolish, Obama entered the 2015 Vienna nuclear and missile deal that has legitimized Tehran’s terrorist government, released well over a hundred billion dollars of frozen assets, and dissolved international economic sanctions. Iran has responded by extending its presence in the Middle East as ISIS had receded, to the point where it now has tens of thousands of troops in Syria and is building missile factories there and in Lebanon.

Before 2009, publishers would have immediately dismissed novelists who brought them such a plainly unrealistic plot. Today, however, it qualifies as history, not fantasy. This is the agonizing legacy the Trump administration inherited, compounded by widespread feelings among the American people that we have once again sacrificed American lives and treasure overseas for precious little in return.

These feelings are understandable, but it would be dangerous to succumb to them. We didn’t ask for the responsibility of stopping nuclear proliferation or terrorism, but we are nonetheless ultimately the most at risk from both these threats.

And as we knew during the Cold War, but seem to have forgotten since it ended, our surrounding oceans do not insulate us from the risk of long-distance nuclear attacks. We face the choice of fighting the terrorists on our borders or inside America itself, or fighting them where they seek to plot our demise, in the barren mountains of Afghanistan, in the MENA deserts, and elsewhere.

Nor can we shelter behind a robust national missile-defense capability, hoping simply to shoot down missiles from the likes of North Korea and Iran before they hit their targets. We do not have a robust national missile defense capability, thanks yet again to Barack Obama’s drastic budget cuts.

President Trump appreciates that nuclear proliferation and radical Islamic terrorism are existential threats for the United States and its allies. During the 2016 campaign, he repeatedly stressed his view that others should play a larger role in defeating these dangerous forces, bearing their fair share of the burden. But candidate Trump also unambiguously (and entirely correctly) called for restoring our depleted military capabilities because he saw that American safety depended fundamentally on American strength.

Sept. 11 should be more than just a few moments of silence to remember the Twin Towers falling, the burning Pentagon and the inspiring heroism of regular Americans in bringing down United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa. We should also seriously consider today’s global threats. Those who made America an exceptional country did so by confronting reality and overcoming it, not by ignoring it.

The names of passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93, who lost their lives in the September 11 attacks, as displayed at the National 9/11 Memorial in New York. (Image source: Luigi Novi/Wikimedia Commons)

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John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is Chairman of Gatestone Institute, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad”.

This article first appeared in The Pittsburgh Tribune Review and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

Categories: Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Islamic terrorism, North Korea - our past failures, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Obama's failures, September Eleven
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