After Losing Cargo Ship to U.S., North Korea Found Another in Vietnam

The 16,000-ton bulk carrier Vinalines Fortuna was put up for sale by financially strained, state-run Vietnam National Shipping Lines in mid-2018. It is now known as the Tae Pyong, meaning “Peaceful,” and has been sailing under North Korea’s flag since at least January, according to shipping records. That month, it broadcast a self-identifying radio signal near the port of Nampo, North Korea’s main cargo terminal on its western coastline.

The ship is highlighted in a new report that documents the resilience of North Korea’s maritime trade despite a two-year effort by the U.S. and its allies to try to choke off an economic lifeline for Pyongyang. International efforts to pressure leader Kim Jong Un have fractured in recent months, with both China and Russia calling for sanctions to be eased, saying the brunt of the hardship caused by trade embargoes is falling on ordinary North Koreans.

Analysts at the U.K.-based think tank Royal United Services Institute used ships’ radio signals and satellite imagery to determine that North Korean-controlled cargo vessels have made at least 175 trips to the Chinese coastal city of Zhoushan, near Shanghai, since October last year. There, the images suggest, many of the ships delivered coal, North Korea’s most lucrative export.

Some shipments were delivered in recent weeks, indicating that even as North Korea tightened its land border with China and cut most trade to guard against the new coronavirus, it has continued to export goods to China by sea.

The scale of the shipments shown in RUSI’s report is larger than has been previously known. “Far from being isolated cases of sanctions evasion, the effort to move resources from North Korea’s ports to China is happening on an industrial scale,” the analysts say.

One high-resolution satellite photo taken on Jan. 31 showed seven ships near Zhoushan that the analysts identified as North Korean cargo ships and were able to name based on the size, structure and markings on each vessel. They identified two others in the photo as ships that had recently been in North Korea, but couldn’t name them. A smaller vessel in the photo, they said, was used to move cargo from ships to port.

Under United Nations sanctions introduced in August 2017, North Korea was banned from exporting any coal, iron or lead. By suppressing North Korea’s exports, the U.S. and others have tried to force Mr. Kim to negotiate away the country’s nuclear weapons. Pyongyang has remained defiant. On Monday, it held its first missile test of the year.

According to Chinese customs data, China hasn’t imported any coal from North Korea since 2017. China denies it is allowing North Korea to violate international sanctions. After a panel of U.N. experts focused on monitoring sanctions implementation reported last September that suspected North Korean cargo shipments were being delivered to the Zhoushan area, Beijing responded that the information “lacks timeliness and cannot lead to on-site investigation.”

China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article.

Calls to the North Korean mission at the U.N. for comment weren’t answered. The country has repeatedly rejected the legitimacy of sanctions.

The U.N. panel on North Korea is scheduled to release a new report on sanctions enforcement this month.

The North Korean cargo ship seized by U.S. authorities, the 17,000-ton Wise Honest, was detained by Indonesian authorities while transporting coal in April 2018. The U.S. took control of the ship, the second-largest in North Korea’s fleet, and moved it to American Samoa. North Korea demanded its return, saying the seizure violated the spirit of an agreement between Mr. Kim and President Trump in 2018 to improve relations.

The ship was sold for scrap late last year. The confiscation was the first time a North Korean cargo vessel has been seized by the U.S.

The movements of the new North Korean ship, the Tae Pyong, couldn’t be established because it hasn’t sent radio signals to identify its position this year, other than the one occasion in January from Nampo, and the ship didn’t appear in the satellite images.

The Tae Pyong could have switched to broadcasting a fake identity, a common practice among North Korean vessels. The ships turn off the device that transmits their location to other vessels, satellites and land-based tracking systems, or use the device to broadcast a fake identity to hide their connection to North Korea.

Vietnam National Shipping Lines didn’t respond to requests about the sale of the ship.

The RUSI analysts suspect North Korea may have secured a second cargo ship of a similar size in 2019 that has been using a fake identity during travel between Nampo and Zhoushan. The analysts found that many of the North Korean vessels they tracked used fake identities, but many could still be identified using the high-definition satellite images. They estimate around 30 ships have been making trips to Zhoushan.

Asian government officials say North Korea has been able to keep its maritime trade flowing in part by conducting fewer ship-to-ship transfers of goods in international waters, and moving more to areas close to its own coast or within China’s territorial waters.

After the U.N. banned North Korean exports of commodities in 2017, the U.S., Japan and other nations put together a naval coalition to monitor and deter attempts by Pyongyang to secretly transfer goods between vessels at sea. The coalition uses Navy and coast-guard vessels, as well as surveillance aircraft, to try to catch transfers between ships.

“They are becoming more skillful in hiding the ship-to-ship transfers away from areas that we can patrol,” said one Asian government official involved in monitoring sanctions enforcement. “It’s a real headache for us.”

Write to Alastair Gale at [email protected]