High-end Western goods are making their way to North Korea's elite through a complex system of port transfers, secret high-seas shipping and shadowy front companies
WASHINGTON — The armored black limousines appear everywhere with Kim Jong Un, sleek Western chariots for the young dictator of North Korea.
Flown in from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on a cargo plane, the sedans carried Kim through the streets of Singapore; Hanoi, Vietnam; and Vladivostok, Russia, during summit meetings with President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Sometimes a phalanx of bodyguards jogs beside them.
The cars are top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benzes popular with world leaders — the Maybach S62 and Maybach S600 Pullman Guard, which cost $500,000 to $1.6 million each. And Kim is using them in open defiance of United Nations sanctions intended to ban luxury goods from North Korea.
High-end Western goods are making their way to North Korea’s elite through a complex system of port transfers, secret high-seas shipping and shadowy front companies, according to research by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a nonprofit Washington group that looks at smuggling networks, and an investigation by The New York Times.
The evasions point to potential limits of sanctions as a tool for the Trump administration to pressure Pyongyang into serious negotiations to end its nuclear weapons program. U.S. officials say their only real leverage with North Korea is tough sanctions. During the failed summit in Hanoi in February, Kim’s main demand of Trump was to lift major sanctions, which have been tightened since late 2016.
At the request of President George W. Bush’s administration, the United Nations imposed sanctions in 2006 to keep luxury goods out of North Korea.
©2019 New York Times News Service