S’pore-Headquartered Oil Trading Company Was Reportedly Smuggling Oil to North Korea

By
Avery
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North Korea has been addicted to launching missiles for years instead of developing its dilapidated economy or something.

It literally launched two just recently.

Either way, this represents a grave threat to international peace and security and must be stopped with the collective effort of the international community.

But it seems like some aren’t actually doing their part. And apparently, Singaporeans, or people in Singapore, are involved.

Singaporean Tanker Exporting Oil to North Korea

Exporting oil to North Korea has been forbidden by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions since 2017. However, North Korea continues to receive what are effectively illegal oil shipments from abroad.

A key player in this oil trade, as a New York Times investigation reveals, appears to be the Winson Group, a prominent oil trading business based in Singapore.

The investigation centred around a large oil tanker called the Diamond 8, which is revealed to have made four trips to North Korea between 2019 and 2020, likely to sell oil to North Korea in violation of international sanctions. 

To avoid scrutiny, it would sail into international waters before receiving oil transfers from other Winson-associated tankers, travelling to North Korea afterwards.

The tanker is registered under offshore shell companies and obfuscates its true ownership. Currently, for example, the Diamond 8 belongs to an Indonesian company with registration in Seychelles, but without a physical office anywhere.

Where even is Seychelles?

The ship also seems to have falsely reported its identity, as the report shows. Last autumn, it claimed to be a wholly different oil tanker called the Pasha4 while in Fujian Province, China, when the actual Pasha4 was thousands of kilometres away in Turkey.

Sneak 100.

So far, the Winson Group has denied all allegations, stating to the New York Times that it “did not take any actions in violation of applicable sanctions against North Korea or any sanctioned countries”.

So What About These Sanctions?

International sanctions against North Korea are hardly a new thing, as anyone paying attention to global news in the last couple of years would know. 

While the United States has been imposing sanctions on the country since the 1950s following the Korean War, concerted efforts by the international community mainly came after 2003, when North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

Which, as you might have guessed from the name, basically says you can’t build nukes. And North Korea wants nukes.

In response, the UNSC passed a series of sanctions that progressively widened in scope from 2006 to 2017, originally only covering military supplies but soon extending to metals, textile, and fuel.

The sanctions are meant to push North Korea into increasing hardship and force North Korea to comply with international demands, to denuclearise and maybe to be less of a bad country in general. 

Furthermore, evasions of these sanctions are common. As the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea reports, “the DPRK is flouting sanctions through trade in prohibited goods with evasion techniques that are increasing in scale, scope, and sophistication”. 

Observers have also argued that the sanctions are unlikely to be effective in pressuring North Korea to denuclearise. Instead, the hostility of the international community may only further North Korea’s resolve to pursue nuclear weapons in self-protection.

So How’s Singapore’s Relationship with North Korea?

Singapore was actually on pretty cozy terms with North Korea, at least until the latest round of sanctions. 

Singapore is among the precious few countries that still host a North Korean embassy, currently located on Beach Road, as the BBC reports. It frequently received North Korean officials for training on economic policy, and even allowed North Korean tourists to travel visa-free.

These, however, came to a stop as the UNSC tightened its sanctions and Singapore complied, suspending all trade between the two countries since November 2017.

So your dream North Korean trip that you’ve thought of after watching Crash Landing on You, unfortunately, will have to wait.

Featured Image: ebedev / Shutterstock.com

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Avery
Email: [email protected]