Canada to join international effort to deter North Korean smuggling

CTV News Channel: Canada counters smuggling A Canadian military aircraft will deploy as part of a multi-national effort to prevent evasion of sanctions and patrol the Korean Peninsula

Canada is joining the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia in a new surveillance initiative to counter North Korea’s maritime smuggling.

In a statement issued today by Global Affairs Canada, Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland and Minister of National Defence Harjit S. Sajjan pledged Canadian support for efforts to police the United Nation’s Security Council’s sanctions against North Korea.

The support includes committing a maritime patrol aircraft and approximately 40 personnel to the region to help “ensure effective implementation of UNSC sanctions on North Korea,” according to the statement.

The Canadian Armed Forces craft, to be based in the U.S. military’s Kadena air base in Japan, joins an Australian P-8A Poseidon aircraft as the latest additions to a force of American, Japanese, and British air and sea crafts already in the region.

The initiative is designed to counter North Korea’s attempts to evade UN Security Council sanctions by providing maritime crafts that will allow the member states to monitor North Korean vessels on the high seas, in an effort to stop smuggling.

Since 2006, the UN Security Council has been imposing increasingly tougher sanctions against North Korea, in an attempt to pressure the country to abandon their nuclear weapons program.

The latest resolution from December sharply lowered limits on North Korea's refined oil imports and authorized Member States to inspect and seize ships suspected of smuggling banned items including coal and oil to and from the country.

In spite of the long standing sanctions, North Korea has continued to illegally export commodities to China, Malaysia, South Korea, Russia and Vietnam, as well as co-operating with Syria and Myanmar on ballistic missile technology. These illegal exports brought in nearly $200 million in just nine months last year, according to UN experts.

UN experts believe that North Korea has been using illegal ship-to-ship transfers to avoid the sanctions – a theory that was all but confirmed after Japan’s military witnessed such a transfer in late February of this year. The observed transfer was the third such incident reported by Japan that month.

Canada’s announcement was one of many to come in the wake of the historic meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, which resulted in a joint statement pledging that the two countries would work to remove all nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula.

Despite the nations welcoming the news of denuclearization, all have made it clear that they support maintaining the sanctions on North Korea until concrete action is taken.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said today during a televised press conference that the member states hope that “surveillance of the area enables [ship-to-ship] smuggling to be identified and then, of course, those who are a party to that to be held responsible and brought to account.”

In a separate statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan also respond to the Canadian and Australian efforts, saying ”Japan welcomes these activities from the view point of upholding the maximum pressure on North Korea while maintaining the solidarity of international community.”