Is North Korea’s economy feeling heat from the United States?
- While North Korea is showing some signs of distress from sanctions, there is also evidence that Pyongyang is finding ways to cushion the blow
The blacklisted 1970s-era North Korean oil tanker floated in waters a few hundred kilometres south of Shanghai, tethered to a ship half its size by a hose, as if hooked up to an intravenous line.
The offshore coupling, spotted by the Japanese navy last month, was the latest evidence that North Korea may be succeeding in skirting international sanctions designed to pressure the isolated regime into giving up its nuclear weapons.
The ship was likely receiving a transfusion of oil, a primary target of ongoing international sanctions on North Korea.
When North Korea’s Kim Jong-un met with US President Donald Trump last June, Trump claimed it was his “maximum pressure” campaign centred on sanctions that forced Kim to the table for the first-ever summit between US and North Korean leaders.
But analysts say North Korea continues to find ways to adapt.
Illegal smuggling operations like the suspected one in the East China Sea have allowed the nation to import between half and two-thirds of the oil supply it was getting before the sanctions ramped up in 2017, according to an estimate by Go Myong-hyun, an economist at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a Seoul-based think tank.
