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The document accused leader Kim Jong Un’s regime of conducting “operations against financial institutions and virtual money changers” to pay for arms and keep North Korea’s ailing economy afloat. An anonymous country that is a member of the UN has claimed that hackers stole virtual assets worth $ 316.4 million between 2019 and November 2020, according to the document.
The report also alleged that North Korea “was producing fissile material, maintaining nuclear facilities and modernizing its ballistic missile infrastructure” while continuing “to search for materials and technology for these programs abroad.”
North Korea has sought for years to develop powerful nuclear weapons and advanced missiles to combine them, despite their enormous cost and the fact that such a pursuit has turned the country into an international pariah prevented by the UN from leading almost any economic activity with other countries.
UN investigators said an unnamed country had deemed it “highly likely” that North Korea could mount a nuclear device on a ballistic missile of any range, but it was not. still not clear if these missiles could successfully enter Earth’s atmosphere.
The report was written by the United Nations Group of Experts on North Korea, the body charged with monitoring the application and effectiveness of the sanctions imposed on the Kim regime as punishment for its nuclear weapons and development. of its ballistic missiles.
Details of the report, which is currently confidential, were obtained by CNN through a diplomatic source at the United Nations Security Council, who shared parts of the document on condition of anonymity. The Panel’s report includes information received from UN member countries, intelligence agencies, the media and those fleeing the country – not North Korea itself. These reports are generally published every six months, one in early fall and another in early spring.
It is not known when this report will be released. Previous leaks have infuriated China and Russia, both members of the UN Security Council, causing diplomatic deadlocks and delays.
Trump tried to get Kim to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons through high-level diplomacy, betting his negotiating skills could help him succeed where former presidents had failed. Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader in 2018, then met him twice more, but failed to convince the young North Korean dictator to stop researching nuclear weapons .
It’s unclear exactly how U.S. President Joe Biden will go forward, although his aides have made it clear that allies of South Korea and Japan will. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said last week that the administration was conducting a review of the policy and that he would not “anticipate that review” in public.
A new source of income
The UN panel of experts found that strict border controls for Covid-19 in North Korea had affected the regime’s ability to import much-needed hard currency from abroad. Pyongyang uses complex sanctions circumvention systems to keep its economy afloat and bypass strict UN sanctions.
Coal has always been one of North Korea’s most valuable exports – the 2019 Panel report found Pyongyang raised $ 370 million by exporting coal, but shipments since July 2020 appear to have been suspended.
This is likely due to the fact that North Korea severed almost all of its ties with the outside world in 2020 to prevent an influx of coronavirus cases, including cutting off almost all trade with Beijing, an economic lifeline the poor country has needs to prevent its people from going hungry. While the move appears to have kept the pandemic at bay, it has brought the North Korean economy closer to the brink of collapse than it has been in decades.
Devastating storms, punitive sanctions and the pandemic hit the North Korean economy in 2020 and experts. Experts believe that North Korea can rely more on its hackers to generate revenue during the pandemic due to the border closures.
Cooperation with Iran
The report cites several unnamed countries who said North Korea and Iran have resumed cooperation on long-range missile development projects, including trade in essential parts needed to develop these weapons. North Korea successfully tested three Intercontinental Range Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) in 2017 and paraded a gargantuan new ICBM at a public event in October.
Tehran appeared to deny that it was working with North Korea on missile technology. The report included comments from the Iranian UN mission, which said in December that the UN Panel of Experts had received “false information and fabricated data may have been used in the Panel’s investigations and analyzes.”
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