Can the US and its allies monitor North Korea sanctions?

A new international body operating outside the UN framework aims to monitor North Korea’s compliance with sanctions, taking over from a UN panel of experts seven months after Russia blocked the renewal of the panel’s mandate.
The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team includes the US, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy.
A statement by the South Korean Foreign Ministry said the group is open to other states joining, including nations from the Global South.
“The goal of the new mechanism is to assist the full implementation of UN sanctions on [North Korea] by publishing information based on a rigorous inquiry into sanctions violations and evasion attempts,” the statement added.
Analysts warn this task is likely to become increasingly difficult due to the burgeoning strategic partnership between Russia and North Korea. The two countries share a land border with road and rail links and are determined to forge closer military and economic ties.
Even before Russia’s Vladimir Putin visited Pyongyang and met Kim Jong Un in June, Russia used its veto powers in the UN Security Council to dismantle the previous monitoring mechanism. According to the US, this happened after the UN panel detailed Russia’s procurement of military equipment and ammunition from North Korea.
“The UN Security Council has become effectively defunct due to Russia’s refusal to cooperate with the other permanent members,” said Park Jung-won, a professor of law at Dankook University.
This week, the US said it saw “evidence” that North Korean troops are in Russia, with Seoul claiming 3,000 of elite North Korean soldiers are currently training on Russian soil to join the battle in Ukraine.
Nevertheless, analysts say continued pressure on Pyongyang is important as the isolated country attempts to obtain advanced military equipment.
“If the UN is paralyzed, then it is up to other states with a legitimate concern to enforce those sanctions against rogue states,” Park told DW, adding that “under international law, it is theoretically and legally possible for allied nations to work together” to enforce it.
Marking the beginning of this new mechanism, US Deputy State Secretary Kurt Campbell told reporters in Seoul that “Russia has continued to use ballistic missiles and other materials unlawfully procured from [North Korea] to further its illegal assault on Ukraine.”
“More recently, Russia and in some instances China has blocked some arenas of cooperation associated with those dangerous and provocative activities,” he said.
Pyongyang responded to the news with anger, with North Korea’s Foreign Minister Choi Sun-hui calling the organization “unlawful and illegitimate” and warning that participating countries will “pay a dear price,” according to state-run media.
The first UN sanctions were imposed on North Korea in 2006, shortly after it conducted its first underground nuclear test. Resolution 1718 bans the export of some military equipment and luxury goods to North Korea, with subsequent resolutions tightening the sanctions after further nuclear tests and rocket launches.
The US, European Union and Japan have also imposed their own sanctions on Pyongyang in an effort to convince it to scrap its nuclear weapons. Tokyo’s sanctions are also designed to encourage North Korea to release Japanese nationals abducted in the 1970s and 80s.
In recent years, a number of nations identified North Korean vessels carrying out risky ship-to-ship transfers of banned goods, including fuel oil, at sea off the Korean Peninsula.
Park, of Dankook University, believes the new monitoring panel may get better results than the UN panel.
“It may very well prove to be more effective in terms of the actual implementation of sanctions as the UN unit was more bureaucratic and required a great deal more discussion before an agreement was reached on a course of action,” he said. “That will not be the case now.”
At the same time, others question if the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team can be effective with North Korea’s neighbors Russia and China also being Pyongyang’s closest allies.
“Russia is not really interested in sanctioning North Korea now,” says Ben Ascione, an assistant professor of international relations at Tokyo’s Waseda University.
“When the UN Security Council passed a resolution in 2017, both China and Russia agreed to cooperate with the rest of the world to sanction the North and to try to pressure it to give up its nuclear weapons,” he told DW. “But the relationship between Russia and North Korea has completely changed, with Pyongyang now sending troops to fight in Ukraine.”
And while the new alliance may be better able to monitor the movements of suspicious ships that might be looking to evade sanctions, this “game of cat and mouse” has already become harder with Moscow and Pyongyang stepping up transfers of military equipment, goods and fuel by train or ships that stay within territorial waters of the two nations’ east coasts.
“Sanctions are tools that can be used to apply pressure, but the idea that we will suddenly be able to have perfect enforcement and get Pyongyang to yield is, I feel, unrealistic,” he said.
Edited by: Darko Janjevic