hankyoreh

A photo released by the UN Security Sanctions Committee on North Korea showing a warship radar which was found to be have been produced in Japan. (Yonhap News)

Despite Japan citing problems with South Korea’s controls on the exportation of strategic goods as a reason for pursuing regulations on exports of semiconductor materials and parts to South Korea, more and more examples are surfacing of items subject to sanctions or used for the development of nuclear weapons and missile having been exported to North Korea from Japan itself.

In annual reports published over the past few years, an expert panel for the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea has commented numerous times on examples of items that are subject to sanctions or could be diverted into military use being exported from Japan to North Korea. According to the expert panel, the warship radar pictured in a photograph of an anti-ship missile test-launch published by North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Feb. 7, 2015, was determined to have been produced by a Japanese company.

A photo released by the UN Security Sanctions Committee on North Korea showing a Japanese-made crane that was used transport an intermediate-range ballistic missile. (Yonhap News)

A crane used by North Korea to transport Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missiles to the launch site from which they were launched over Japanese airspace in August and September 2017 was also found to have been produced in Japan, the UN panel report said. The Japanese company in question acknowledged exporting the crane to North Korea in 1992; the crane itself was placed on a list of items subject to North Korea sanctions in 2016.

The panel further concluded that the camera and RC receiver on a North Korean drone that crash-landed on Baengnyeong Island in the West Sea, near North Korea, in March 2014 were Japanese products. The exportation of items related to nuclear development was also confirmed in the Japanese government’s own investigation. According to August 2008 data from the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry released on July 13 by Song Gi-ho, a trade expert with the group MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society, an oil diffusion pump and oil rotary vacuum pump produced by Tokyo Vacuum were re-exported to North Korea for used in its nuclear facilities. The items, which are used to separate radioactive isotopes, were found to have been brought into the North by way of Taiwan, with the Japanese company Nagano exporting them despite being aware of concerns that they could be re-exported to North Korea and used for nuclear development. The items were discovered during a 2007 examination of the Yongbyon nuclear facility by the International Atomic Energy Agency. While a Japanese government investigation confirmed the involvement of a Japanese company, the business in question was given a “warning” but not indicted.

“Japan instituted its controls on South Korea exports because of security reasons including controls on strategic goods, but the key question is whether there are legitimate grounds for excluding only South Korea from the list [of countries] receiving preferential security treatment,” Song said.

“To control exports to South Korea alone without any basis is a violation of WTO norms stipulating ‘consistent, fair, and rational’ operation of trade regulations, and it’s something that will be difficult even for Japanese companies to accommodate in the long term,” he said.

By Park Min-hee, staff reporter

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]