Although the 35-ton shipment of arms discovered aboard an aircraft travelling from Pyongyang is in contravention of UN Resolution 1874, which prohibits the sale of arms by North Korea, experts agree that it is unlikely to derail nuclear negotiations, which appear to be slowly gathering steam.
The consensus of a majority of experts comes after North Korea tentatively agreed on the need to return to a multilateral negotiating forum on denuclearization last week.
The shipment of proscribed arms was discovered when the plane, an Ilyushin-76 cargo aircraft registered in Georgia, made an emergency landing in Bangkok’s Don Muang Airport on Friday. It was apparently scheduled to continue to Colombo, Sri Lanka for refueling, although its final destination is not known.
One Thai Air Force official was quoted by Reuters over the weekend as saying that the plane was ultimately heading for Pakistan.
Sri Lanka, for their part, denied any knowledge of the arms shipment, pointing out that there would be little point in defying a UN resolution to buy from North Korea when the same items are freely, and legally, available from China.
The crew, four Kazakhs and one Belarusian, were detained on charges of illegal possession of weapons by the Thai authorities and appeared in court on Monday morning, whereupon they were ordered to be detained for a further twelve days for questioning. According to Al Jazeera, Alexandr Zrydnev, ILyas Issakov, Viktor Abdullayev, Vitaliy Shunkov and Mikhail Petukhou denied the charges, claiming that they had no idea they were transporting arms. They had previously declared to customs authorities that they were transporting oil drilling equipment.
Despite the apparent seriousness of the illegal shipment, the Korean National Defense University’s Kim Yeon Soo told The Daily NK, “The U.S. has decided on a ‘two track strategy’ of sanctions and negotiations, so it will deal with sanctions through the UN while separating this case from the nuclear negotiations.”
Professor Kim concluded, “North Korea’s deviation is not significant enough to affect negotiations with the U.S., but this case does give the U.S., Japan and South Korea an opportunity to take the upper hand in denuclearization negotiations.”
Jeon Sung Hoon, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification agreed, noting, “Regardless of the dialogue between North Korea and the U.S., the North has always gone its own way, exporting arms. Therefore, regardless of this case, the North Korea-U.S. dialogue will go on.”
“Even with respect to this case, in which the North apparently violated the UN Resolution, the U.S.’ position will not really change.”
An official inside the South Korean administration also agreed, saying, “This does not bear much relation to the main stream of the U.S.-North Korea dialogue. This is the core of the two track approach.”
However, an anonymous researcher from the National Policy Institute in Seoul cautioned, “We have to see how things go, because this case happened at a moment when the U.S.-North Korea dialogue had just become active. Although the U.S. has an open mind towards dialogue with the North, they will deal with this aggressively if it is confirmed that the North broke UN Resolution 1874.”
Meanwhile, spokesperson Mun Tae Young of South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said today, “If it is confirmed that weapons have been transferred from North Korea, it will definitely be a violation of UN Resolution 1874.”
North Korea is estimated to earn somewhere in the region of $1 billion annually from sales of arms, despite UN resolutions prohibiting such exports.
