A North Korean oil tanker designated as a target of UN sanctions has entered the Chinese port of Zhoushan, and it is noteworthy whether the Chinese government will detain the ship, Voice of America (VOA) reported on the 6th (local time).
According to MarineTraffic, which shows the real-time location of the vessel, the North Korean-shipped Ryesonggang 1 is waiting at the mooring dock of Zhoushan Port as of the 5th China time.
The mooring is a place where ships wait before anchoring at the pier, and there are currently regarding 100 oil tankers waiting at the mooring, including the Ryesonggang No.
About 5km northwest of the mooring dock, there is a large oil storage area in the form of an island, where 160 large and small oil tanks and 10 oil tanker berthing facilities are located.
It is unusual for a North Korean vessel subject to sanctions to be confirmed waiting for its turn to enter a port at a mooring.
In November 2017, the US Treasury Department caught and released the image of the Ryesonggang-1 transshipping oil from other ships on the high seas. Then, in December 2017, the UN Security Council designated four North Korean vessels, including the Ryesonggang 1, as the target of sanctions, and requested that UN member states ban these vessels from entering the port.
According to Marine Traffic, the Ryesonggang 1 is operating only with the Maritime Mobile Service Identification Number (MMSI) without the International Maritime Organization (IMO) number.
North Korea has a history of ‘vessel washing’ by giving the MMSI of its own vessel to other vessels, so it cannot be ruled out that the Ryesonggang No. However, an expert panel of the Security Council’s North Korea Sanctions Committee defined North Korea’s ‘ship laundering’ as an act of evading sanctions.
Meanwhile, North Korean ships have been sparsely entering and leaving Zhoushan Port. In this year and last year’s reports, the UN Security Council’s panel of experts on North Korea’s sanctions committee released satellite images of several North Korean cargo ships transporting coal to the waters near Zhoushan Port and dozens of North Korean ships staying in the waters near Zhoushan.
The Security Council’s 2017 sanctions resolution on North Korea limits the amount of refined oil that North Korea can import to 500,000 barrels a year and requires countries that supply oil to North Korea to report monthly supply.
The Chinese government has reported that the oil delivered to North Korea is non-fuel oil such as asphalt raw material petroleum bitumen and lubricating oil, rather than general fuels such as gasoline and diesel.
[서울=뉴시스]
