An NGO detected a five-fold spike in ship visits at North Korea’s major ports since 2019

North Korea has ramped up illicit coal exports on the back of its ties with China and Russia, a new report found, with its military exploiting weakened sanctions oversight to profit from trade tied to forced labor, slavery and other human rights abuses.

“Satellite imagery of Nampo port taken post the pandemic shows North Korean waters busier than at any point on record,” the Seoul-based Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR) said in a Tuesday report conducted with U.K.-based investigators from Data Desk.

The NGO linked the surge to North Korea’s coal and mineral trade, raising concerns over violations of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2371, which bans DPRK coal exports.

NKHR detected 3,756 vessels at North Korea’s five major ports in 2025, up from 783 in 2019.

The increase coincided with Russia’s March 2024 veto that ended the U.N. Panel of Experts that monitored DPRK sanctions violations after nearly 15 years of work, it said.

Over 3,000 detections were recorded at Nampo alone, up from 554 in 2019, with Chinese-flagged vessels largely replacing other foreign flags of convenience in recent years.

The report said this increase points to the “deepening normalization of direct Chinese commercial involvement in sanctioned North Korean trade.”

NKHR argued that the coal and mineral trade is tied to “modern forms of slavery and mass human rights abuses,” while revenue from coal continues to line the pockets of military elites and fund weapons programs.

The report comes after South Korea’s intelligence agency estimated that North Korea exported around 1.5 million tons of coal last year, likely disguising some of it as Russian-origin fuel, according to a ROK lawmaker in early June.

MILITARY-RUN SLAVERY

The DPRK’s defense ministry holds an almost exclusive monopoly on the country’s coal exports, while production may fall under governmental bodies such as the Ministry of Coal, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security, currently known as the State Intelligence Bureau.

The defense ministry absorbed coal-producing assets from Department 54, a unit responsible for financing the military sector, after the 2013 execution of leader Kim Jong Un’s uncle Jang Song Taek, who oversaw the unit, the report said.

“The Ministry’s exclusive claim over major mineral exports rests on a broader social and political consensus that the military occupies a priority position in the distribution of national assets.”

U.N. sanctions banning resource exports in 2017 only reinforced the ministry’s role, making it the “only North Korean institution with the organizational capacity” to handle “large-volume commodities like coal,” including for foreign markets, the report continued.

Likening the DPRK economy to a pyramid, NKHR said it “continuously extracts resources and profit upward to sustain elite institutions.”

The coal industry especially relies on forced labor from political prisoners, low-caste (songbun) families, descendants of South Korean prisoners of war and mobilized soldiers, the report stated.

This includes descendants of an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 South Korean POWs who were captured during the Korean War and never returned home, according to NKHR.

This map shows the location of several labor camps around coal mining sites in North Korea Image: NKHR

Meanwhile, North Korea has leveraged sanctions evasion through growing cooperation with China and Russia, with NKHR noting a shift from small-scale smuggling toward “organized third-country logistics and origin laundering.”

China and Russia play a role on two fronts: shielding North Korea from multilateral accountability while enjoying cheap minerals and overseas workers.

Russia, in particular, benefits from North Korean labor at construction sites and other businesses, while China acts as Pyongyang’s main financial hub through secret accounts, crypto traders and front companies.

RASON TALLY

The latest report also explores North Korea’s coal trade through its northeastern port of Rason, better known as Pyongyang’s hub for arms exports to Russia.

Rason is home to RasonConTrans, a Russian company allowed under U.N. resolutions 2270 and 2375 to transship Russian coal through the port.

NK News first reported RasonConTrans resumed operations after pandemic closures in April 2024, as well as the appearance of a suspected Chinese vessel near Rason’s coal pier in June for the first time in years. Additional satellite imagery showed the freighter had picked up coal at Rason as early as May.

NKHR found the Jianxin Phoenix (IMO 9146003) made at least seven visits between May and Aug. 2024. The Russian Embassy in the DPRK publicly reported the vessel’s role in the coal trade late that year.

NK News analysis of available satellite imagery suggests that the vessel, or similar ships, picked up coal at least 20 times between May 2024 and June 2026, with the latest Rason visit dating to May 15.

After its latest loading, the vessel (now sailing as the Golden Legend since Dec. 2025) traveled to China and arrived at Huangpu port, just southeast of Guangzhou, on May 31.

The nearly 190-meter-long bulk carrier traveled to several other Chinese ports, including Dongjiakou, Shanghai, Waigaoqiao and Nanjing, the report stated, delivering some 273,000 tons of coal across the seven trips.

The actual tally is likely to be significantly higher. Based on an estimated load of 39,000 tons per voyage, the vessel may have carried around 780,000 tons of coal by last May.

While Russian coal transshipment through Rason is allowed as a U.N. sanctions exemption, the freighter has repeatedly stopped broadcasting its location before calling at Rason, apparently to obscure its movements.

It would then resume broadcasts en route to Chinese ports. MarineTraffic data shows the Jianxin Phoenix has also frequented the Russian ports of Vanino and Elga, as well as waters near Sakhalin Island.

NKHR concluded that the vessel’s clandestine visits to Rason, despite the legal carveout, “defeats the verification basis on which the exemption rests,” pointing to the risk that “North Korean coal is being mixed into the stockpile that ships out under the Russian-origin exemption.”

North Korea has a history of laundering coal by moving it to Russian Far East ports before transshipping it elsewhere to avoid triggering alarms among sanctions monitors.

Edited by David Choi