Rep. Cammack Leads RSC Colleagues In Letter To Sec. Blinken About Biden Administration's Failures To Sanction Chinese Support Of North Korea

Dear Secretary Blinken,

On March 4, North Korea launched a ballistic missile toward the sea off its east coast, its second missile test that week. On February 26, Japan and South Korea claimed that Pyongyang launched a ballistic missile which the Kim regime claimed was for a reconnaissance satellite system.¹Your administration has recently assessed that these latter two missiles are components of new intercontinental ballistic missile system under development.² North Korea has launched at least 11 projectiles this year,³ including two modified long-range cruise missiles⁴ and its first intermediate-range ballistic missile since 2017, the Hwasong-12, which can reach the U.S. territory of Guam.⁵

These launches follow North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s January 2021 announcement that his regime would accelerate missile, military, and nuclear-related development to include “super large hydrogen bombs, …mid and long-range cruise missiles, …hypersonic gliding flight warheads… unmanned aerial vehicles and military reconnaissance satellites.”⁶ In the face of these developments we find your administration’s North Korea policy lacking and urge you to levy, tighten, and enforce sanctions based on congressional statutes as well as the broad executive authorities available to incumber North Korean military modernization and counter the Kim regime.

Congress passed mandatory sanctions on North Korea in 2016, 2017, and 2019 by overwhelming bipartisan majorities. The North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016 passed the Senate 96-0 and the House 408-2. Title III of the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act updated North Korea sanctions and passed the Senate 98-2 and the House 419-3. The Otto Warmbier North Korea Nuclear Sanctions and Enforcement Act of 2019 was included in the 2020 NDDA, which passed the House 377-48 and the Senate 86-8. Despite this bipartisan track record of calling for pressure on North Korea, your administration does not appear to have a serious sanctions strategy nor implementation plan for mandatory penalties on North Korea.

Your administration issued its first North Korea sanctions on December 10, 2021, to coincide with International Human Rights Day with a portion focused on Pyongyang’s abhorrent human rights record.⁷ The State Department then issued sanctions on January 12, 2022, focused on North Korea ballistic missile program,⁸ targeting a North Korean individual based in Russia, a Russian individual and a Russian entity. Treasury issued sanctions on the same day targeting five North Korean individuals, one based in Russia and four based in China.⁹ On March 11, your administration sanctioned three Russian companies and two individuals for supporting North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.¹⁰ Yet the administration still has not sanctioned additional entities, individuals, and financial institutions for violations of section 104 or section 201B of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016.

As members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest caucus in Congress, we are committed to performing vigorous oversight of the administration’s lack of enforcement of sanctions on North Korea. We would like your written response to the following questions:

1. Why did the administration not designate additional entities in China and Russia as part of its North Korea sanctions designations?
2. Why has the administration not sanctioned additional entities, individuals, and financial institutions for violations of section 104 or section 201B of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016.

Moreover, in the UN Panel of Experts September 2021 Midterm Report (p.13), the Panel noted “A Member State assesses that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has imported substantially less oil in the first half of 2021 than the historical average, while also assessing that increasing illicit imports will mean that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is still likely to exceed the cap in 2021.” The report also noted that “Vessels of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea employed similar obfuscation techniques to mask their presence and where they trade.”¹¹

While most cargo vessels of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have been observed not to transmit [automatic identification signals] (AIS) signals, those that do mainly transmit fraudulent identifiers, particularly in the Ningbo-Zhoushan waters in China, where they gather to transfer their illicit coal cargo. These fraudulent AIS profiles, while hiding vessels’ true identities, are identifiable on commercial maritime databases.” As you are aware, the Treasury Department in 2019 provided an updated sanctions guidance on North Korean illicit shipping practices where it highlighted these AIS and other obfuscation techniques that include but are not limited to ship-to-ship (STS) transfers and falsifying cargos.¹² Moreover, U.N. sanctions prohibit North Korea from exporting coal. We would also like your written responses to the following questions:

3. What is the administration doing to address the North Korean shipping mitigation measures issued by the Treasury Department in 2019?
4. Does the Department assess that North Korea exported coal in 2021? If so, why has the administration not issued sanctions against entities, individuals, and financial institutions, including in China, associated with these activities.

Lastly, we are disturbed by similar UN reporting from 2021 indicating “resumed cooperation on long-range missile development projects” between North Korea and Iran. According to a UN Panel of Experts, this cooperation involved Iran’s Shahid Haj Ali Movahed Research Center, an entity on the U.S. SDN list,¹³ and received “support from North Korea for a space-launch vehicle.”¹⁴ Iran has enhanced its space and satellite-launch vehicle testing in the past year.