Wall Street Journal
The Obama Administration is touting the latest United Nations sanctions as a milestone against North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. We’d like to believe it too, but a close look at the draft Security Council resolution offers many reasons to doubt.
The resolution would double the number of blacklisted North Korean individuals and state entities, adding Pyongyang’s atomic-energy and space agencies. Luxury goods banned from export to North Korea would grow to include watches, yachts and snowmobiles. A ban on sales of aviation fuel targets state-owned airline Air Koryo, while a ban on sales of rocket fuel targets Kim Jong Un’s missile program.
More significant are efforts to cut Pyongyang’s access to hard currency and smuggled weapons technology. The sanctions expand the list of banned arms and dual-use goods, and they require states to inspect all cargo transiting their territory to or from North Korea by sea, air or land. They would also squeeze North Korean mineral exports, including coal and iron ore, which in 2014 accounted for 53% of Pyongyang’s $2.8 billion in exports to China, per South Korean state figures.
Overall the blacklist of North Korean proliferators is growing by only 12 individuals and 20 entities to a total of 64; the U.N.’s former blacklist on Iran was far larger at 121. In any case, none of these matter if China won’t rigorously enforce them—which it has never done.
There are other loopholes and oversights. The nominal ban on North Korean mineral exports applies only to purchases that demonstrably fund illicit activities, rather than “livelihood purposes.” Yet money is fungible, so Chinese coal purchases excused on livelihood or humanitarian grounds will still channel hundreds of millions of dollars to the regime.
The sanctions also do nothing about the Chinese oil transfers that keep the Kim regime alive. Or Chinese purchases of textiles from mostly state-run North Korean factories that have quadrupled to $741 million a year since 2010 and recently ensnared Australian surf brand Rip Curl in a supply-chain controversy. Or the 50,000-plus North Korean laborers overseas, largely in China and Russia, earning some $230 million a year for their masters in Pyongyang.
U.S. officials say China has new incentive to back sanctions because it wants to block South Korea’s recent moves to deploy the U.S.-built Thaad missile-defense system. That may be why China wants to look cooperative, but the new sanctions aren’t enough to justify walking back on Thaad. China still views the North as a political buffer against South Korea, a thorn in the side of Japan and the U.S., and a diplomatic card to play at the U.N. So China has long played a double game of rhetorically deploring North Korea’s nuclear program while propping it up in practice.
The better way to squeeze the North is closer cooperation among Washington, Seoul and Tokyo to sanction Chinese banks that facilitate trade with Pyongyang. This worked a decade ago until the Bush Administration fell for more of China’s diplomatic promises. China won’t get serious about stopping North Korea until it sees that the U.S. and its allies are serious.
