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UPI
30-05-2025
- Politics
- UPI
North Korean aid helping Russia increase attacks on Ukraine, report says
Military cooperation between North Korea and Russia has enabled Moscow to increase its missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, a new report by the United States and 10 allies said. File Kremlin Pool Photo by Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik/EPA-EFE SEOUL, May 30 (UPI) -- Military cooperation between North Korea and Russia has enabled Moscow to increase its missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, the United States, South Korea and nine other allies said in a new report. The report, released Thursday, was the first produced by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, a group formed in October after Russia vetoed the mandate for a U.N. panel to continue its work overseeing North Korean sanctions violations. The MSMT collected evidence that North Korea and Russia "engaged in myriad of unlawful activities" in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, according to the 29-page report. These violations include transfers of artillery, missiles and combat vehicles from North Korea to Russia for its war against Ukraine. In return, North Korea has received air defense systems and technical weapons expertise from Russia. The MSMT also found that Moscow has supplied shipments of refined petroleum products far in excess of a yearly cap under U.N. sanctions and maintained banking relations with Pyongyang. These forms of unlawful cooperation have "contributed to Moscow's ability to increase its missile attacks against Ukrainian cities including targeted strikes against critical civilian infrastructure," the report said. The military relationship "also provided the resources to allow North Korea to fund its military programs and further develop its ballistic missiles programs ... and gain first-hand experience in modern warfare." North Korea sent over 11,000 troops to Russia in 2024, and another 3,000 in the early months of this year, the report said, citing MSMT member states. North Korea acknowledged sending the troops for the first time last month, claiming they helped recapture lost territory in Kursk Province from Ukrainian forces. The MSMT includes the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand and South Korea. The team was established after Russia used its U.N. Security Council veto in March 2024 to end the mandate of the Panel of Experts, which had overseen North Korean sanctions monitoring since 2009. The Panel of Expert's final report cited numerous sanctions violations by North Korea, including an estimated $3 billion generated from cyberattacks used to fund the regime's illicit weapons program. Thursday's MSMT report covers the period between January 1, 2024 and April 30, 2025. It concludes that North Korea and Russia intend to continue their military cooperation "at least for the foreseeable future." Citing an unnamed MSMT participating state, the report claims that North Korea shipped as many as 9 million rounds of mixed artillery and multiple rocket launcher ammunition to Russia in 2024 aboard Russian-flagged cargo vessels. The North also sent Russia at least 100 ballistic missiles, the report said, which were "subsequently launched into Ukraine to destroy civilian infrastructure and terrorize populated areas such as Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia." In return, Russia has transferred air defense systems, including at least one Pantsir-class mobile combat vehicle, according to unnamed participating MSMT countries. Moscow has also provided data feedback on Pyongyang's ballistic missiles, leading to improvements in missile guidance performance. Under U.N. Security Council sanctions, North Korea can procure no more than 500,000 barrels of refined petroleum per year. The MSMT report estimates, however, that Russia supplied more than a million barrels of oil to North Korea between March and October 2024. About 8,000 North Koreans have been sent to Russia to work in IT, construction and other sectors, the report added, while the two countries are actively conducting financial transactions through ruble-denominated bank accounts. Both are violations of U.N. sanctions. In a joint statement, the 11 MSMT member states urged North Korea to "engage in meaningful diplomacy." "We will continue our efforts to monitor the implementation of U.N. [Security Council Resolutions] on the DPRK and raise awareness of ongoing attempts to violate and evade U.N. sanctions," the statement said, using the official acronym for North Korea.
Yomiuri Shimbun
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
North Korean Defectors Urge the UN to Hold the Country's Leader Accountable for Rights Abuses
Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, speaks with North Korean officers after the Victory Day military parade in Moscow, Russia, Friday, May 9, 2025, during celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany during the World War II. UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Eunju Kim, who escaped starvation in North Korea in 1999, was sent back from China and fled a second time, told the United Nations on Tuesday that the country's leader must be held accountable for gross human rights violations. Gyuri Kang, whose family faced persecution for her grandmother's religious beliefs, fled the North during the COVID-19 pandemic. She told the General Assembly that three of her friends were executed — two for watching South Korean TV dramas. At the high-level meeting of the 193-member world body, the two women, both now living in South Korea, described the plight of North Koreans who U.N. special investigator Elizabeth Salmón said have been living in 'absolute isolation' since the pandemic began in early 2020. Thousands of North Koreans have fled the country since the late 1990s, but the numbers have dwindled drastically in recent years. Salmón said North Korea's closure of its borders worsened an already dire human rights situation, with new laws enacted since 2020 and stricter punishments, including the death penalty and public executions. In another rights issue, she said, the deployment of North Korean troops to support Russia in its war against Ukraine has raised concerns about 'the poor human rights conditions of its soldiers while in service, and the government's widespread exploitation of its own people.' The North's 'extreme militarization' enables it to keep the population under surveillance and it exploits the work force through a state-controlled system that finances its expanding nuclear program and military ventures, Salmón said. North Korea's U.N. Ambassador Kim Song called the allegations that his country violates human rights 'a burlesque of intrigue and fabrication' and insisted that tens of millions of North Koreans enjoy human rights under the country's socialist system. He accused the West of being the bigger violator, through racial discrimination, human trafficking and sexual slavery. But the two defectors and human rights defenders detailed numerous abuses. Kim, who said her father died of starvation, told U.N. diplomats that after making it to China across the Tumen River the first time, she, her mother and sister were sold for the equivalent of less than $300 to a Chinese man. Three years later, they were arrested and sent back to the North. In 2002, they escaped again across the river. Kang, who was banished to the countryside as a 5-year-old because of her grandmother's religious beliefs, said she became the owner of a 10-meter (33-foot) wooden fishing boat and escaped on it in October 2023 with her mother and aunt. She said she was lucky to have access to information about the outside world and to have been given a USB with South Korean TV dramas, which she said she found 'so refreshing and more credible than North Korea state propaganda,' though she knew being caught could mean death. 'Three of my friends were executed, two of them in public for distributing South Korean dramas,' Kang said. 'One of them was only 19 years old. … It was as if they were guilty of heinous crimes.' She expressed hope that her speech would 'awaken the North Korean people' and help them 'to point in the direction of freedom.' Kim accused North Korea of sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine without them knowing where they were going and using them as cannon fodder to make money. 'This is a new and unacceptable form of human trafficking,' she said. Kim called for the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, to be investigated and held accountable by the International Criminal Court. Addressing the world's nations, she said: 'Silence is complicity. Stand firm against the regime's systematic atrocities.' Sean Chung, head of Han Voice, who spoke on behalf of a global coalition of 28 civil society organizations, called on China and all other countries to end forced repatriations to North Korea. He called on U.N. member nations to urge the Security Council to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court, and to impose and enforce sanctions on 'every official and entity credibly found to be responsible for North Korea's atrocity crimes.'
