Who smuggled North Korea’s coal into South via Russian port?

South Korean authorities have opened an investigation into a UN panel’s finding that North Korea transhipped over 9,000 tons of coal, disguised as Russian exports, to South Korean ports in Incheon and Pohang, North Gyeongsang, last October.

A ship loaded with North Korean coal in a satellite picture Source: VOA

According to a recent United Nations panel of experts report, North Korean coal shipped to the Russian port of Kholmsk was reloaded on two vessels that entered South Korea’s Incheon and Pohang ports and arrived after the UN Security Council’s comprehensive coal ban was implemented in August last year.

The panel’s findings, released on June 27, updating a March report, said the coal was shipped from North Korea’s eastern port of Wonsan in Kangwon Province and Chongjin in North Hamgyong Province to Kholmsk on Russia’s Sakhalin Island on six occasions between July and September 2017.

The Panama-flagged Sky Angel ship was found to have carried some 4,156 tons of North Korean coal from Kholmsk to Incheon, which it entered on Oct. 2.

Korean political commentator Jung Sik Seo analyses its implications.

[Full story is available on audio news.]