Since Russia vetoed the extension of the U.N. Panel of Experts mandate earlier this year, governments have been examining ways to reconstitute the Panel and continue its work tracking North Korean sanctions violations. The newly announced Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) is designed to begin to fill that void.
The MSMT brings together the United States, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom in an effort to monitor North Korea’s sanctions violations. Together the countries hope to ensure the full implementation of U.N. sanctions on North Korea through the publication of Pyongyang’s sanctions violations.
That will be a difficult mission and require the MSMT to make difficult choices. The nexus of the most significant North Korean sanctions violations rests in Russia and China – both uncooperative partners in sanctions enforcement. As one former member of the U.N. Panel of Experts has noted, Russia and China became disinterested in enforcing U.N. sanctions years before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Inside the Panel of Experts, the two countries would take steps to minimize or exclude sanctions violations related to Russian and Chinese firms. Tracking and highlighting these violations will be critical to the MSMT’s work, but they are increasingly difficult to track.
One clear area of focus for the MSMT will be the sanctions violations from North Korea’s support of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Estimates from South Korea suggest that North Korea’s export of weapons to Russia last year earned the regime $540 million. With significant weapons shipments only taking place after the September 2023 summit between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, that figure accounts for a short period of North Korean weapons exports to Russia. In contrast, North Korea only exported $292 million in goods to China for all of 2023.
Recent reporting indicates that North Korea has sent over 6 million 152mm artillery shells to Russia since the war in Ukraine began. If correct, that would suggest that North Korea has earned close to $2.9 billion from artillery sales alone. Verifying these figures and how Russia is compensating North Korea need to be one of the MSMT’s priority tasks.
In addition, Russia has reportedly taken a series of steps to support North Korea including helping with telemetry for its satellite launch, releasing $9 million of $30 million in frozen assets, assisting North Korea in getting around financial sanctions, providing fuel beyond the level allowed under U.N. sanctions, providing food and shipments of the materials necessary to continue producing weapons for Russia, as well as agreeing to a mutual defense provision in their new treaty. While all of these actions have value for Pyongyang, they seemingly fall below the threshold of what Russia owes North Korea. Filling in this gap, specifically in terms of any weapons technology Russia may be transferring to North Korea, is an important next step.
Part of this puzzle relates to the flow of microelectronics to North Korea. Conflict Armament Research, a U.K.-based think tank, has determined that many of the electronic components in a recovered North Korean ballistic missile form the battlefield in Ukraine were from the United States and other allied countries. In addition, the report found that 75 percent of the parts with date codes were produced between 2021 and 2023, suggesting that North Korea has active smuggling networks for recently produced electronics. There is strong reason to believe these networks run through China. Targeting those networks would slow North Korea’s weapons development and hinder Russia’s war effort.
While Russia and China will likely be a focus, they are not the only pathway for North Korea to evade sanctions. As the final report of the Panel of Experts noted, 18 states reported trade with North Korea that appeared to include sanctioned items. Only five of those states responded to requests for information, and all but one claimed that the data was misreported. The other state claimed trade involved goods that were exempted for humanitarian reasons. The possibility that other states may be importing sanctioned items from North Korea also points to the need for the MSMT to engage other countries and provide capacity building for customs and other officials to help them identify potential sanctions violations.
The composition of the MSMT will matter as well, both in terms of countries and personnel. Without the endorsement of the United Nations, the MSMT risks facing questions about its legitimacy – something that North Korea has already raised. Even with the United Nations’ mandate states were not always responsive or cooperative with the Panel of Experts. That is likely to be even more the case now.
While there may be no way to avoid claims that the MSMT is illegitimate, bringing in a more diverse group of countries over time, especially from Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, could help to counter that claim and demonstrate the North Korea’s weapons development remains a concern for the global community. In a new era of disinformation, the MSMT will also need to deal with efforts to delegitimize its work through disinformation campaigns as well.
The composition of the personnel the participating governments include will also be a factor in the MSMT’s success. The U.N. Panel of Experts had individuals assigned specific portfolios. The new MSMT could improve on that model by increasing the personnel involved, but also considering new options such as using a mix of public and private sector experts ensure the MSMT has the specific expertise that is needed to track different types of sanctions violations.
The creation of the MSMT also presents an opportunity to tap into new technologies. Ukraine, for example, has been using AI to connect publicly available data to track sanctions violations. Similar techniques could be used to combine corporate and shipping records to find North Korean sanctions violations.
The MSMT’s work monitoring sanctions will also need to be married with enforcement mechanisms. In some cases, consultations with governments where sanctions violations have occurred may be enough to change behavior, but the partners in the MSMT may also have to take more significant actions. In cases of significant sanctions violations such as North Korea’s arms trade with Russia, the governments should consider enacting joint sanctions. Whatever tools the MSMT members use to address sanctions violations, the most important step will be that they act in unison.
While Russia’s veto ended the Panel of Experts’ work, U.N. sanctions on North Korea remain in place and U.N. member states – including Russia – are obligated to enforce them. Monitoring and investigating North Korean sanctions violations is a key part of that process, and the MSMT can begin to fill part of the gap. But it should also be viewed as part of a process as the partner governments continue to explore new ways to monitor and enforce U.N. sanctions on North Korea.