Doubts in Asia Over Whether New Sanctions Against North Korea Can Work
By
CHOE SANG-HUN and
EDWARD WONGFEB. 26, 2016
SEOUL, South Korea — As a new set of sanctions against
North Korea circulated at the
United Nations Security Council, analysts in South Korea and China expressed doubts on Friday that the measures would be tough enough to force the pariah state to give up its
nuclear weapons.
The United States presented a
draft resolution it had negotiated with China to the Security Council on Thursday, calling for wide-ranging penalties against
North Korea for a nuclear test it conducted on Jan. 6 and for its launching of a long-range rocket a month later, both of which violated previous council resolutions.
The draft contained the most comprehensive and toughest sanctions against the isolated country that the council has ever considered. There was no doubt that they would squeeze North Korea’s ability to raise funds for its weapons programs, depending on how vigorously China, the North’s single largest trade partner, enforced the sanctions, analysts said.
If adopted, the resolution would require United Nations member states to inspect all cargo passing through their territories to or from North Korea for illicit goods. It would also attempt to limit North Korea’s sale of minerals, especially coal and iron ore, two of its most important exports.
ut the draft contained no effective sanctions against a booming trade across the relatively porous 870-mile border between China and North Korea — a lifeline not only for the impoverished North Korean people but also for their government’s ability to earn cash. Nor did it require countries, especially China, to cut off oil exports to the North.
It would also not affect tens of thousands of North Korean workers at factories, construction sites and logging camps in China, Russia, Africa and the Middle East. According to some estimates, they send home $200 million to $300 million a year, most of which human rights groups contend ends up in the coffers of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
“These sanctions will certainly hurt the North,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor at Dongguk University in Seoul. “But I don’t think they will hurt them enough to abandon their
nuclear weapons.”
Analysts in China said Beijing’s approval of the sanctions proposed by the United States was the result of a complex calculus by Communist Party leaders. A factor that has loomed large for them in recent weeks is plans by Washington to deploy an antiballistic missile system, called Thaad, in South Korea. Chinese officials are seeking ways to prevent that from.
“If it was not for the Thaad issue, there might not be such cooperation between China and the U.S.,” said Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai. “By doing this, it is still possible for China to dissuade the Americans from deploying Thaad at China’s doorstep.”
China’s agreement to limit imports of North Korean coal and iron ore, for example, came with an important caveat: It should be demonstrated that such imports would support illicit North Korean activities. North Korea’s minerals, mainly its coal and iron ore, accounted for 53 percent of its $2.8 billion in exports to China in 2014, according to data compiled by the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
“There are still too many loopholes for us to predict that they will lead to North Korea’s denuclearization,” said Chang Yong-seok, an analyst at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University. “These sanctions are more like a warning to the North about how much more it could suffer if it conducted another nuclear test, and an inducement for the country to return to the negotiating table.”
Currently, an estimated 75 percent of North Korea’s foreign trade, including almost all of its oil imports, is with China, providing Beijing with unique economic leverage over the North. The two-way trade amounted to $5.5 billion last year, according to figures from Chinese customs authorities.
But China’s approach on how to solve the North Korean problem is fundamentally different from that of the United States or South Korea. It insists that sanctions should not aim to push North Korea toward instability but to induce it back to the negotiating table.
After negotiating the proposed sanctions with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday that North Korea could ultimately have a peace agreement with the United States “if it will come to the table and negotiate the denuclearization.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/27/world/asia/north-korea-sanctions-un.html?_r=0