North Korea obtained a key tool used in the production of nuclear warheads by shipping it through three separate countries in an elaborate ploy to dodge international sanctions on the country’s weapons programme.
According to a US think tank, authorities in Mexico, South Africa and China failed to spot false documentation for a vacuum furnace, which can be used in creating uranium fuel for nuclear warheads. The case demonstrates the increasing difficulties of enforcing international sanctions against North Korea.
The report by the Institute for Science and International Security cites unnamed government sources to describe an incident in 2022, when the vacuum furnace was shipped from Spain with an accurate declaration of its function.
Vacuum furnaces can have legitimate civilian applications but are also used to produce nuclear warheads
ALAMY
Such equipment is designated “dual use” under United Nations sanctions, meaning that while it has legitimate civilian uses, it also has an important function in nuclear weapons manufacture, and is banned for export to North Korea.
“This type of furnace is a mainstay of a nuclear weapons program, particularly one that uses weapon-grade uranium as the nuclear explosive material, as North Korea is known to do,” David Albright, a physicist and former weapons inspector with the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in the report.
“With North Korea expanding its uranium enrichment program and producing greater quantities of weapon-grade uranium, this new furnace would be especially important.”
The shipment arrived in Mexico, where it was given a new code under the “harmonised system”, which is used internationally to label traded items. Listed under the general term machinery, it was then shipped to South Africa where it was redesignated as scrap metal and sent on to China, from where it passed to North Korea.
Although Beijing agreed to sanctions against North Korea passed by the UN security council (UNSC), it has become lenient about enforcing them as its relations with the West have deteriorated.
“Given China’s poor record of preventing controlled or UNSC-banned exports from ending up in North Korea, Russia, and other sanctioned countries, any export to China should be presumed suspicious and receive additional scrutiny,” the think tank’s report warns.
It comes as the governments of the United States, Japan and South Korea said that North Korean hackers stole more than $600 million in cryptocurrency in 2023, which could also go towards its nuclear programme.
“North Korea’s cyber programs pose a threat to [South Korea], the United States, Japan, and the international community, and in particular, pose a significant threat to the integrity and stability of the international financial system,” the three countries said in a statement last week.
“The three governments are working together to prevent North Korea’s theft of private sector and others and to recover the stolen funds, with the ultimate goal of blocking the illicit proceeds used for North Korea’s illicit WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and ballistic missile programs.”
North Korea shows off its Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missiles during a military parade in Pyongyang
AFP
The governments also warned of the threat of North Korean IT workers impersonating Japanese citizens in order to get remote work in overseas companies. Much of the income earned from such employment is believed to be channelled to the North Korean government.
North Koreans are banned by their government from freely travelling abroad. Experts say that they are allowed to work overseas only because most of their pay goes to the government, providing a source of valuable foreign currency.
UN sanctions oblige member states to send home North Korean overseas workers. Formerly, many of them worked in construction sites in Russia and the Middle East.
A group of UN monitors entrusted with assessing the effectiveness of sanctions estimated in 2023 that as many as 10,000 North Korean IT experts continue to work overseas.
The use of virtual proxy networks, which disguise the location of an internet user, helps them to obscure their identities.