Punching below your weight – Europe needs to escalate North Korea sanctions – EUobserver

North Korea has again tested ballistic missiles this January. Possibly, few in Brussels have noticed.

Truth be told, it is to be expected. There is nothing more symptomatic of the EU’s inherent inertia when it comes to North Korean policy than a recent report from NK News.

It reads almost sensationally – the trade balance data from UN Commodity Trade Statistics Database indicates that some 10 EU member states (Austria, Poland and Estonia among the most notable) imported goods from DPRK in 2024.

Those goods, apparently, included shotgun shells and parts.

Experts and the countries themselves were quick to downplay this fact as mislabelling of South Korean imports and simple data errors.

The problem, however, is not that we are looking at a massive sanctions violation on part of those affected European countries. The problem is that they brush this off as a niche statistics gimmick.

Even when the data is eventually corrected, we are left with unexplained values lingering in the sheets. A question immediately arises: Are EU states content to let trade with North Korea exist on paper, even if it’s not actually happening?

They should not be because North Korea is a threat to European security and a gross human rights violator.

Passively following Washington’s lead?

Yet this passive attitude is an effect of years of largely following US leadership on DPRK policy and resorting to symbolic statements on the Korean Peninsula events — ‘a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing’ as Neville Chamberlain once put it.

In recent months, RUSI and others have called for a strategic shift in Brussels thinking on North Korea. Basic steps in policy approach can be taken immediately to remedy the situation.

As it stands the EU is primarily applying new sanctions designations against North Koreans only in the context of its Russia sanctions package.

This is an inadequate approach.

Ironically, the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine only exacerbated the perception that the North Korean problem will be better handled by the Americans and that Europe needs to focus on the emergency close to home

It stops short of recognising the North Korean threat to European security in its own right.

The EU should acknowledge that in the new geopolitical context, and especially with a UN stalemate on new sanctions designations, it is free to shape its sanctions policy in a more independent way, prioritising its values and interest, irrespective of traditional US leadership.

The current EU sanctions list, last updated in May 2024, is a figure of adherence to the UN Security Council designations on the one hand and coordination with the US on the other.

Reliance on the US to lead allied sanctions policy on North Korea has been a position of comfort. The Europeans simply prefer to allocate resources elsewhere.

Ironically, the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine only exacerbated the perception that the North Korean problem will be better handled by the Americans and that Europe needs to focus on the emergency close to home.

This could not be further from the truth as even the war showcases how the DPRK is actually a distinctly European threat.

14,000 troops and a network of embassies in Europe

Estimates say that up to 14,000 North Korean troops have been involved in fighting a sovereign European democracy — Ukraine.

A network of DPRK embassies spread around the European continent have been centres of espionage and sanctions busting operations for 20 years now, cooperating with European criminals and conducting illegal commercial activities.

Last but not least, DPRK has years of experience in shadow fleet operations, which it happily shares with Russia, vastly contributing to the threats that Russian maritime sanctions evasion operations are presenting.

This means the EU should designate individuals and entities tied to the regime in Pyongyang more frequently and looking at what North Korea does in Europe rather than through the lens of its specific threat to US national security or UN non-proliferation priorities.

Comparison with EU on Iran

In order to rejuvenate the stagnated policy approach to DPRK, European decisionmakers could look to how they approach sanctions on Iran.

The EU plays a decisively proactive role in sanctioning Iranian individuals and entities on human rights grounds. Just this January, a new package was announced.

For some reason, the same approach is thoroughly lacking from the EU’s sanctions policy towards North Korea.

Arguably, the regime in Pyongyang has some of the worst human rights record in history, yet somehow EU sanctions on North Korea are firmly anchored in UN technical provisions on preventing Pyongyang from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Granted, there’s been an attempt to include DPRK nationals in the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions regime but that further highlights the entire issue — that the EU is not paying enough attention to Pyongyang specifically.

Taking a closer look at adding a specific human rights sanctions package to the body of sanctions on DPRK could serve as a good impetus to bring the works back on the agenda.

Chances are, that the individuals and entities committing gross human rights violation in North Korea could also be involved in directly threatening European security.

In such case it is imperative for the EU to speak up.