북한, 해주 인근 모래 채취 수백만불 벌어들여 North Korea might be making millions -- and breaking sanctions -- selling sand. Yes, sand
North Korea might be making millions -- and breaking sanctions -- selling sand. Yes, sand.
CNN Digital Expansion Shoot, Joshua Berlinger
By Joshua Berlinger, CNN Business
Hong Kong (CNN Business) It was May of last year when Lucas Kuo and Lauren Sung noticed something strange: more than 100 ships gathering in the waters near Haeju, North Korea.
This handout image courtesy of C4ADS shows ships in the waters off the coast of the North Korean city of Haeju.
북한, 해주 인근 모래 채취 수백만불 벌어들여 국제제재법 위반 루카스 궈와 로렌 성이 북한에서 이상한 것을 발견한 것은 작년 5월이다: 100척 이상의 배들이 북한 해주 인근 해역에 모여 있다. 빅 데이터를 사용하여 보안 문제를 분석하고 조사하는 비영리 단체인 워싱턴 소재 첨단 국방 연구 센터(C4ADS)에서 일하는 그들의 작업의 일부로서, 두 분석가는 북한 해역과 더 나아가 동북아 지역의 교통 상황을 주시하고 있었다. 그들은 북한이 유엔의 대북제재를 집행해야 하는 세관원들의 눈을 피해 공해상에서 석탄과 다른 귀중한 물품들을 대량으로 판매했다는 비난을 받아왔기 때문이다. 북한 주민들은 물건을 거래하기 전에 항구로 옮기기보다는 바다에서 배를 옮겨 다니며 원산지에 대해 거짓말을 하는 것으로 추정되고 있다. 이런 판매방식은 팔린 물건에 따라 자금난에 빠진 김정은 정권을 위해 수천만 달러를 긁어모을 수 있다. 그들은 빠르고 신중해야 하며, 보통 기껏해야 몇 척의 배를 필요로 한다. 하지만 두 분석가는 불가사의하게 북한으로 항해하는 수십 척의 배들을 계속 보았다. 도대체 무슨 일이 있었을까 궈씨와 성씨는 국제적으로 대북제재를 회피하고 있는 것으로 보이는 279척의 선박과 관련된 수백만 달러의 가치가 있는 대규모 작전이라는 것을 알아냈다. 하지만 이 배들은 총을 쏘거나, 마약을 거래하거나, 위조지폐를 빼돌리거나, 멸종위기에 처한 종들을 밀매하는 데 이용되지 않았다. 북한은 세계적으로 악명 높은 범죄 조직이다. 그들은 평양의 가장 수익성이 높은 수출품인 석탄조차 운반하지 않았다. 그들은 모래를 준설하고 운반하는데 사용되었습니다. 북한은 2017년 12월에 통과된 유엔 제재에 따라 토석 수출을 금지하고 있습니다. 북한 모래를 거래하는 것은 국제법 위반인 것이다. 황기철 콘페이퍼 에디터 큐레이터 Ki Chul Hwang, conpaper editor, curator |
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As part of their work at the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), a nonprofit that analyzes and investigates security issues using big data, the two analysts keep an eye on traffic in North Korean waters and further afield in Northeast Asia.
They do this because Pyongyang has been accused of selling coal and other valuable goods, sometimes in very big quantities, on the high seas to get around the prying eyes of customs officers, who must enforce United Nations sanctions on North Korea. Instead of moving goods into a port before trading, North Koreans supposedly just move them from one ship to another at sea and lie about their origins.
These "ship-to-ship transfers" can rake in tens of millions of dollars for Kim Jong Un's cash-strapped regime, depending on what's sold.
They are meant to be fast and discreet, and usually involve a few ships at most. But Sung and Kuo kept seeing dozens of ships mysteriously sailing to North Korea.
Something was up.
What Kuo and Sung went on to discover was a massive operation allegedly worth millions of dollars involving 279 ships which appeared to be skirting international sanctions on North Korea.
But these ships weren't being used for running guns, dealing drugs, offloading counterfeit cash or trafficking endangered species, crimes North Korea is notorious for worldwide. They weren't even carrying coal, Pyongyang's most profitable export.
They were being used to dredge and transport sand. That may seem innocuous, but North Korea is barred from exporting earth and stone under United Nations sanctions passed in December 2017. Trading North Korean sand is a violation of international law.
The scheme was prominently featured in the panel's annual report. Alastair Morgan, who coordinates the UN panel that monitors sanctions on North Korea, said in an email that the report's authors decided "the large scale and the significance" of the operation warranted top billing.
The UN report didn't cite C4ADS' data. Morgan said his team submitted their draft in February, before Kuo and Sung published their research in March.
Piecing together the clues
Kuo and Sung watched the ships for several weeks before noticing a pattern. All of those showing up in North Korean waters had a link to China. Some were flying Chinese flags. Others had Chinese names.
Ship-to-ship transfers usually involve vessels registered to small countries where regulation is cheap and oversight is lax — boats flying a so-called flag of convenience.
But maybe these weren't ship-to-ship transfers, the pair thought. They realized they needed more information before they could come to any conclusions.
So they turned to satellite imagery, perhaps the most important tool among the growing open-source intelligence community. The photographs they got their hands on showed clouds of sand under what appear to be dozens of barges and dredgers, evidence that earth was being pulled up from the bottom of the sea en masse in North Korean waters.
Sung did some research into North Korea's history of sand sales and dredging, and everything quickly clicked.
"We found plenty of reports from the early 90s to the present indicating that rather than this kind of being anything new, North Korea has always been exporting sand to a lot of its neighboring countries," Sung said.
Sung said it now appeared "there was a conscious effort to do this under the radar."
This handout image courtesy of C4ADS shows ships in the waters off the coast of the North Korean city of Haeju.
The importance of sand
Modern civilization is built on different types of sand. It's a key ingredient in concrete, glass and even the processors that power the electronic device you're reading this on. Humanity consumes about 50 billion tonnes of sand per year — more than any other natural resource on the planet except for water.
Its supply may seem limitless, but there's only so much of it to be dug up and removing it from the earth can have environmental consequences.
The sand that blankets the world's deserts is too fine to use in construction because it doesn't bind well. River sand is typically the best for making cement. Sand from the bottom of the ocean works too, but it needs to be washed and desalinated before it can be used.
Pyongyang has seemingly cashed in on the sand trade for years. Years ago, when North and South Korea did significant business together, sand was Pyongyang's most valuable export to its southern neighbor, according to media reports at the time. North Korea sold $73.35 million worth of sand to the Republic of Korea in 2008, though South Korea stopped buying North Korean sand shortly after.
But there's an even more important customer bordering North Korea: China, the world's most voracious consumer of sand.
During the 2010s, the country underwent a construction boom unprecedented in world history — Beijing used more concrete in 2011 through 2013 than the United States did in the entire 20th century. Though the building boom has slowed today compared to its peak, China still uses more concrete than the rest of the world combined.
This handout image courtesy of C4ADS shows ships in the waters off the coast of the North Korean city of Haeju."
What was going on?
Neither Sung or Kuo knows what happened to the million tons of sand after it was shipped to various Chinese ports across the country's coast. Sand smuggling is a major issue in China and the trade is notoriously opaque.
China's Ministry of Public Security, which did not respond to CNN's request for comment for this story, launched a campaign at the start of last year to crack down on illegal sand operations along the Yangtze River. By October, authorities had investigated 90 groups in 10 different provinces and seized $251 million, 305 sand mining vessels and 2.88 million cubic meters of sand, Chinese state media reported.
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