By Sean Bell, military analyst
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has adopted nine major sanctions on North Korea in response to the country’s nuclear and missile activities since 2006.
In June of that year, the UNSC established an embargo on exports of major arms to and imports from North Korea.
In June 2009, it widened the embargo to all arms, except for the export small arms and light weapons to the country, before eventually banning those too in 2015.
Russia was a signatory to those embargoes.
Yet, late last year, a series of Russian senior leadership visits to North Korea were focused on solving Russia’s growing demand for weapons, artillery shells and missiles to support its war in Ukraine.
Although Russia has denied that it imports North Korean weapons, the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) has been tracking ships transporting weapons to Russia.
It has tracked four Russian cargo ships, each transporting hundreds of containers.
Estimates suggest that over 7,000 containers carrying over one million ammunition shells, rockets and missiles have been sold to Russia by North Korea since a deal was struck last year.
Russia denies that it is importing any North Korean weapons.
However, an inspector from the Conflict Arms Research team based in Ukraine has been studying the remains of a series of missiles fired at Ukrainian targets this year and has made a series of important discoveries.
According to reports, parts of the missile remains included characters only used in the Korean alphabet, and the number ‘112’ was stamped into parts of the missile – ‘2023’ in the Korean calendar.
Closer investigation of hundreds of electronic components revealed that the missiles were “bursting” with Western technology.
Most of the electronics were manufactured in the US or Europe, and were sourced over the past few years.
Despite supposedly significant sanctions, North Korea has managed to illicitly procure large quantities of Western technology, assemble missiles and sell them to Russia to be used in its war in Ukraine.
Although the North Korean weapons might not be very effective, they are cheap, so can be procured in large quantities and used to degrade Ukrainian air defence systems.
Quantity has a quality all of its own – so what is the point of sanctions if they can so easily be bypassed?
North Korea is evidently profiting from its arms export arrangement with Russia, which will create further opportunities for Pyongyang to expand arms exports as a vital source of revenue – to grow its economy and military capability.
Not to mention it undermines the authority of the UN – given that Russia is a signatory to the ban on North Korean arms exports, yet is flagrantly ignoring this ban to meet its wartime needs.
Yet, the UN appears powerless to enforce its own sanctions.