North Korea has once again been caught in the act of illegal ship-to-ship transfers in its territorial waters.
According to Voice of America (VOA) on the 13th, private U.S. satellite service Planet Labs took pictures of the northern waters of Seok Island in North Korea’s West Sea. They captured images of ships measuring 100m and 45m in length, closely aligned in the middle of the ocean.
The illegal transfer captured this time aligns with the illicit transfers of North Korea that the UN Security Council and others have previously disclosed.
The location is the western sea of North Korea, an area the UN Security Council Expert Panel highlighted as a new transfer location in the reports published last year and this year. The ship-to-ship transfers that used to be rampant in the South China Sea and the East China Sea have moved to North Korean territorial waters.
VOA stated, “We have reported several suspected cases of transfers in this area since the beginning of this year,” adding, “Recently, ships less than 50m long have been seen aligning their hulls, and it was hard to find large ship transfer scenes. However, a 100m ship was caught again today.”
In 2017, the UN Security Council prohibited North Korean or North Korean proxy ships from receiving any goods through Resolution 2375, paragraph 11. This means that any goods exchanged through transfers, regardless of what they are, would all be a violation of the sanctions.
The expert panel pointed out that North Korea’s ship-to-ship transfer activities in its territorial waters reflect its intention to evade surveillance and the reality that it cannot unload precious goods at overseas ports.