NEWS ANALYSIS

Stricter fuel sanctions more likely to hurt N. Koreans than regime

North Koreans holding a dance festival to celebrate the 100th birth anniversary of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's grandmother Kim Jong Suk, and the 26th anniversary of the inauguration of former leader Kim Jong Il as supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, in an undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency on Sunday. Experts say the latest fuel sanctions will have the hardest impact on ordinary North Koreans. PHOTO: REUTERS

TOKYO* The United Nations' latest sanctions on North Korea are more likely to hurt ordinary people in the isolated nation than slow leader Kim Jong Un's push to develop missiles capable of hitting the US with nuclear weapons.

''The likeliest impact on the deeper cuts in petroleum products will be on sectors non-essential to the survival of the regime,'' said Assistant Professor Paul Musgrave of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. ''That means that the incidence of these cuts will fall hardest on ordinary North Koreans.''

North Korea on Sunday described the move as an ''act of war'' and vowed to take revenge on the United States and other UN Security Council members.

The sanctions may create further resentment in the country against the Trump administration, according to Mr Hong Kang Chel, a former North Korean border guard who defected in 2013.

''Cutting oil supplies will only make North Koreans rage against the US because they now have to work more by hand on farms, while officials will keep driving cars using smuggled petroleum,'' Mr Hong said.

''North Korean workers sent overseas have brought back home the ideas and cultures of capitalism they witnessed, but now (US President Donald)Trump is leading the way for blocking that route,'' he added.

The new resolution caps deliveries of petroleum products to the equivalent of 500,000 barrels per year starting on Monday. In September, the Security Council had demanded that imports be cut to the equivalent of two million barrels, from 4.5 million.

It also limits crude imports at current levels of about four million barrels annually, which the US has said China provides via the Dandong-Sinuiju pipeline.

The UN resolution said North Korea is selling coal and other prohibited items ''through deceptive maritime practices'' and is getting fuel via ship-to-ship transfers, which are used in the petroleum industry to move liquids from one tanker to another at sea, avoiding on-shore infrastructure.

North Korea has been utilising these methods more frequently, using boats from nations including China, according to Japan's Yomiuri newspaper, citing US, Japanese and South Korean officials it did not name.

The US Treasury Department last month identified North Korea's Korea Kumbyol Trading as a firm that has attempted ship-to-ship transfers, possibly of oil. North Korean boats have received contraband oil from what appear to be Chinese ships in international waters on about 30 occasions since October, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported yesterday, citing unidentified South Korean government and US military sources.

To help stop the practice, the UN measure says that countries can seize, inspect or impound any vessel in their ports if there are grounds to believe the ship is being used to transport banned items.

Mr Zhao Tong, a fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy in Beijing, said the sanctions grant authority for member states to seize ships only in their own territorial waters - making it impossible for the US to inspect suspicious vessels within Russian or Chinese areas.

And even if ship-to-ship transfers can be monitored by satellite or other means of surveillance, stopping them would be difficult, according to Prof Musgrave and Honorary Professor Peter Hayes, executive director of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability.

''Monitoring is probably easy, given the US' remote sensing capabilities,'' Prof Musgrave said. ''But enforcement seems hard.''

The full impact of lower petroleum product supplies likely will not be felt during winter as the country's agricultural sector, which consumes ''a surprising amount of fuels'', is less active, said Adjunct Professor Bill Brown of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

''By next spring, I suspect there will be calls for lifting the sanctions to help prevent a fall in food supply,'' he added.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on December 27, 2017, with the headline Stricter fuel sanctions more likely to hurt N. Koreans than regime. Subscribe