The US announced a new wave of sanctions on Wednesday against Chinese entities for allegedly violating UN Security Council resolutions by supplying North Korea with inputs for ballistic missiles, the second such action in little more than a month.
The sanctions target a network of a half-dozen people and five firms in China, accusing them of supporting Pyongyang’s ballistic missile and space programmes.
“In flagrant violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, [North Korea] has continued to conduct launches using ballistic missile technology, including a recent failed effort to place a military satellite into orbit,” the US Treasury Department said in its statement.
“Moreover, the DPRK has supplied ballistic missiles to the Russian Federation, which continues to target civilian population centres and infrastructure in Ukraine, sustaining Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war,” it added.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has made alleged connections between China and Russia’s continued aggression against Ukraine a fixture in its engagements with Beijing and in multilateral forums, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Group of 7.
02:05
War of words erupts over North Korea’s multi-warhead missile test claims
War of words erupts over North Korea’s multi-warhead missile test claims
Administration officials consider North Korea a key link in that connection, as was made clear in September, when the US and Chinese special envoys on North Korea held their first talks in nearly a year.
In those talks, according to the US State Department, Sung Kim, the US special representative for North Korea, and his Chinese counterpart, Liu Xiaoming, discussed Pyongyang’s “increasingly destabilising and escalatory behaviour” and North Korea’s military cooperation with Russia.
The UN Security Council issued numerous sanctions and condemnations against Pyongyang in 2017 in response to a series of missile launches and nuclear tests it conducted.
At the time, concern over how far North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would go with his nuclear weapons programme overcame resistance from Moscow and Beijing.
But whatever cohesion the council managed to assemble on North Korea has since fractured, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 becoming a priority and tensions between Washington and Beijing rising on multiple fronts.
Additionally, the UN mechanism first established in 2009 to ensure that the council’s sanctions were not circumvented ceased to function this year, when Russia vetoed a resolution renewing the mandate of the UN Panel of Experts tasked with that responsibility in March.
Of the 15 countries sitting on the council – including South Korea and Japan – Russia was the only country that rejected the panels’ annual renewal. China abstained.
Among those sanctioned by the Treasury on Wednesday was Shi Qianpei, a Chinese national, who was accused of working with a North Korean individual based in Beijing to procure metal sheets used in the production of North Korean missiles.
Choe Chol-min, the North Korean named in the announcement, and his wife, Choe Un-jong, work through North Korea’s Second Academy of Natural Sciences, a state organisation that conducts research for the country’s ballistics missile programme, to procure equipment for buyers.
Other individuals sanctioned include Chen Tianxin, Shi Qianpei’s business partner and wife, and two of his employees, all of whom helped with the procurement efforts, the Treasury said.
North Korea “also leverages foreign-incorporated companies to purchase items in support of its ballistic missile and weapons production”, it added.
“These companies consolidate and repackage items for onwards shipment to [the country], concealing the true end-user from the manufacturers and distributors of the items.”
