(SMH) -Italy has blocked the sale of two luxury yachts to impoverished North Korea because it suspects they were destined for reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il, the Financial Times reported today.
A contract for the sale of the yachts, worth €12.5 million ($22 million) was terminated this month after a probe by the Italian Government and anti-fraud police, the newspaper said.
The two boats were confiscated by the Ministry of Economic Development amid concerns that allowing the sale would breach international sanctions against Pyongyang, the newspaper said.
"Seeing the type of goods that were involved and the condition that the country [North Korea] is in, we were very suspicious that the yachts were for the leader [Kim], though we have no evidence of this," the ministry said.
A deposit was paid for work on the boats, although it was unclear by whom. The boats have since been returned to Azimut-Benetti, one of Italy's leading luxury yacht makers.
The United Nations imposed sanctions on North Korea for a long-range rocket launch in April. Tensions with the international community rose further after it restarted its weapons program and carried out an underground nuclear test in May.
Kim has been portrayed by visitors and North Korean defectors as a leader who enjoys fine dining, cognac and other luxuries.
The communist state, however, suffers food shortages, and relies on overseas aid to feed millions of its people.
Kim reportedly has life-threatening pancreatic cancer.
AFP
23 July 2009
Sick Kim's suspected two new yachts blocked
20 June 2009
Koreas negotiate as nuclear tensions grow
By Peter Foster in Beijing
(SMH) - NORTH and South Korea have resumed talks on the fate of their last remaining reconciliation project as the US moved to defend itself in the event of a North Korean missile strike on Hawaii.
The future of the Kaesong joint industrial estate just north of the border has become increasingly uncertain as North-South relations have worsened and the nuclear stand-off has intensified.
Pyongyang is demanding extra payments worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Seoul's use of the estate and refuses to grant access to a South Korean employee it detained at Kaesong.
Seoul officials were outwardly optimistic before the resumption of talks yesterday.
"The weather is good today, so wouldn't the talks go well?" a Unification Ministry official, Kim Young-tak, said to the Yonhap news agency before crossing the heavily fortified border at the head of a 14-member delegation.
Meanwhile, Washington is considering using five-way talks with China, Russia, Japan and South Korea to press North Korea to change tack on its nuclear and missile programs, a US official said. The five had been involved in negotiations with North Korea on the nuclear issue.
The idea was raised when the US President, Barack Obama, hosted talks at the White House on Tuesday with the South Korean President, Lee Myung-bak, a senior State Department official told reporters on Thursday.
The US military has moved additional defences to Hawaii in case North Korea fires a missile towards the Pacific island chain.
The decision to deploy missile defence weaponry to Hawaii came as the US military tracked a North Korean ship that it said might be carrying cargo banned under tougher United Nations sanctions imposed on Pyongyang last week.
The US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, said Washington was watching North Korea for missile activity.
"We do have some concerns if they were to launch a missile to the west in the direction of Hawaii," Mr Gates said. "Without telegraphing what we will do, I would just say … we are in a good position, should it become necessary, to protect Americans and American territory."
He said he had approved the deployment of missile defence weaponry to Hawaii and a radar system nearby "to provide support" in case of an attack.
Reports of Pyongyang's missile preparations came as Russia and China took the rare step of jointly urging North Korea to stop its provocative actions of recent months and return to the stalled six-party talks on nuclear disarmament.
Following talks in Moscow, China's President, Hu Jintao, joined his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, in calling for the "swiftest renewal" of talks.
"Russia and China are ready to foster the lowering of tension in North-East Asia and call for the continuation of efforts by all sides to resolve disagreements through peaceful means, through dialogue and consultations," they said.
The possibility has been raised that North Korea might use chemical weapons.
Daniel Pinkston of the International Crisis Group said: "If there is an escalation of conflict and if military hostilities break out, there is a risk that [chemical weapons] could be used. In conventional terms, North Korea is weak and they feel they might have to resort to using those."
Agence France-Presse;Telegraph, London
13 June 2009
Cost-benefit analysis of nuclear ambition puts N Korea in front
A North Korean counterfeit, top, of the $US100 bill, below. Photo: AP
By Blaine Harden in Tokyo
(SMH) -AS THE United Nations moves to enact a sanction on North Korea for its second nuclear test, strong evidence of the failure of a previous international squeeze has emerged.
In recent decades North Korea has earned hundreds of millions of dollars from peddling fake drugs, circulating counterfeit currency and moving missiles and missile parts to countries in East Asia and the Middle East, the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies in California has found.
Because of booming business with China, overseas trade has grown substantially since the sanctions were imposed in 2006 after the government of Kim Jong-il exploded its first nuclear device.
Trade volume rose last year to its highest level since 1990, when a less isolated North Korea was heavily subsidised by the former Soviet Union, an analysis by the Korea Trade and Investment Promotion Agency in Seoul found.
North Korean exports surged 23 per cent last year, on the previous year, and imports rose 33 per cent, the agency said. It found that China's share of overseas trade had risen from 33 per cent in 2003 to 73 per cent last year.
UN Security Council sanctions have had "no perceptible effect" on North Korea's trade with its largest partners, another study, by Marcus Noland, a North Korea expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, found.
"In retrospect, North Korea may have calculated quite correctly that direct penalties for establishing itself as a nuclear power would be modest," he wrote in a paper published at the end of last year. "If sanctions are to deter behaviour in the future, they will have to be much more enthusiastically implemented."
A draft resolution agreed on Wednesday by the United States, China and other major powers would tighten the military, financial and trade sanctions approved in 2006. It could be adopted by Friday.
Noland said the plan was clever. "The North Koreans will be down to whatever China gives them and whatever they can get from their subterranean customers in the Middle East."
The Washington Post
12 June 2009
Tunnels, Guns and Kimchi: Part I and II
Tunnels, Guns and Kimchi: North Korea’s Quest for Dollars – Part I
A Bertil Lintner Research
Rights: © Copyright 2009 The Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
