Joshua claims South Korea has been violating UN sanctions against North Korea by purchasing piles of North Korean coal.
This week, a scandal is burgeoning in South Korea that a wholly owned subsidiary of the nation’s largest power company purchased large quantities of North Korean coal in violation of the coal export ban of UNSCR 2371. The other day, I tweeted about a Korean-language report in the right-leaning site Pennmike, indicating that a Belize-flagged ship carrying North Korean coal was spotted in the port of Pyeongtaek. We’ve since learned that this violation was part of a broader, long-standing, illicit trade.
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Finally, the South Korean government should also pay a diplomatic and political price if it authorized or tolerated this commerce. What we have here, after all, is a self-described U.S. ally that’s just entering negotiations over the cost of U.S. troops that defend it from North Korea, even as it subsidizes a direct North Korean threat to the United States, in violation of U.N. sanctions that were largely approved for Seoul’s own protection. If not even Seoul complies with those sanctions, any suggestion that other nations comply with them becomes a punchline. The obvious suspicion is that in exchange for providing no meaningful concessions in the way of disarmament, humanitarian reforms, or the opening of its society, Pyongyang secured Seoul’s wink-and-nudge complicity in violating a U.N. ban on the sale of Pyongyang’s most valuable export.
As it becomes increasingly clear that Moon Jae-in’s leftist government has chosen sides between its guarantor and its tormentor, it is appropriate to consider whether American taxpayers should continue to subsidize the defense of a wealthy OECD nation that shows so little regard for our own security. This is not how allies behave. Neither permission nor forgiveness is warranted until an investigation establishes conclusively whether the various South Korean parties involved — including its government — violated the sanctions negligently or willfully. And the m
Not a good look for South Korea, but not surprising under the current government.
UPDATE: and here come the denials.
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