Sankei Shimbun, one of Japan's largest daily newspapers, has issued a scathing attack on Russia's position vis-à-vis North Korea, suggesting that Moscow isn't doing enough to support the international community's efforts to force Pyongyang to halt its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. According to the newspaper, Russia is strengthening its economic cooperation with its neighbor, thereby undermining the international sanctions regime.
As proof of its case, Sankei Shimbun pointed to the fact that starting next month, the Mangyongbong-92, a 9,600-ton North Korean cargo-passenger ship which can carry up to 200 passengers and 1,500 tons of cargo, will begin regular ferry service to Russia. Prohibited from entering Japanese waters, the ship will connect Russia's Vladivostok with the Rason Special Economic Zone, located in northeastern North Korea. The ship is expected to cruise back and forth between the two countries up to six times a month.
Russia hopes to use the new ferry service to export seafood, spare parts for agricultural machinery, as well as equipment for the mining industry to North Korea. Last month, the two countries signed an agreement under which the ship will be used to ferry North Korean workers to Russia's Far East, where they are engaged working mostly in logging and construction.
Critical of the new ferry service, Sankei Shimbun complained that it would inevitably become a source of hard currency for Pyongyang, and serve as a "loophole" in the web of sanctions set up by the international community to deal with North Korea's weapons programs.
"Russia should not be permitted to provide support for countries that have weapons of mass destruction, or develop economic cooperation with them," Sankei Shimbun noted. "The direction taken by Russia differs fundamentally from that of Japan, the United States and South Korea, which are taking actions against the growing threat in East Asia. Japan and the United States need to coordinate their actions," the paper concluded.
Asked whether the Mangyongbong-92's Rason-Vladivostok ferry service really is the threat to the region that Sankei Shimbun makes it out to be, Vasily Kashin, a senior fellow at the Institute for Far East Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Russia's Svobodnaya Pressa online newspaper that it's important, first of all, to keep in mind that Sankei Shimbun is well-known for its openly anti-Russian editorial line.
More important, Kashin said, was the fact that Sankei Shimbun's fears are based on insinuations, not evidence. "If there is any evidence that the North Koreans are going to transport something [illegal] from Russia using the aforementioned ferry route, this evidence must be presented. The argument that 'no one can provide any guarantees that they won't do anything' shows that the publication is engaged in pure speculation."
At the same time, the expert noted that "Russia's share of foreign trade with the DPRK is very small, with total trade turnover amounting to about US $100 million a year. It's obvious that such a small sum cannot influence the economic situation in the country in any meaningful way."
Furthermore, Kashin suggested that it was important to point out that Russia is opposed in principle to any attempts to impose sanctions that could affect ordinary North Koreans or make their lives more difficult. For example, according to Russia's Federal Migration Service, there are over 30,000 North Korean citizens working in Russia. The new ferry service will help to transport them back and forth between the two countries. For these North Koreans, "work in Russia is an important source of income; here they earn good money, by North Korean standards, in order to feed their families."
"The components of a missile guidance system can be smuggled through in a briefcase or backpack. Hypothetically, a lot of things can be sent over through this method. But in reality there are many more convenient options. For instance, we have a civilian passenger connection between Vladivostok and Pyongyang. If so desired, one could probably bring some weapons components onboard, but I believe the North Koreans have other channels for the delivery of such parts to their destinations, and these cannot be completely stopped. The fact that Russia's Far East doesn't have the kinds of factories engaged in missile production which the North Koreans might be interested in is another story, however."
For his part, political scientist Azhdar Kurtov suggested that the kind of anti-North Korean 'horror stories' presented by Sankei Shimbun can be found in many other Japanese publications, and in government circles as well.
"Japanese leaders, on the one hand, are concerned about Pyongyang's actions, and this is only logical, since if it comes to a hot war, North Korean missiles will immediately attack Japanese and South Korean territory. On the other hand, however, the Japanese speak out against the DPRK for purely ideological reasons. In the present situation they, like Israel in relation to Iran, are interested in inflating the North Korean problem and seeing a threat where one doesn't exist, so that this real or imagined danger can be eliminated at the hands of the US."
"In other words, if Russia and North Korea did agree to transfer some weapons components to circumvent sanctions, (sanctions which do not apply to trade, by the way), they could do so without a ferry…A ferry running only six times a month is clearly not an option for any sort of large-scale smuggling."
"As far as missile technology is concerned, North Korea has always received it from countries other than Russia. At present, the efforts of Russian diplomacy are, on the contrary, aimed at preventing the escalation of the conflict around the peninsula, since this directly affects the security of Russian territory," the analyst concluded.
