As President Donald Trump prepared to sit down with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un on Tuesday, a known sanctions-violating smuggling ship was loitering nearby off the coast of Singapore.
The
Jia Feng, a Togolese-flagged, 25,000-ton bulk carrier known for smuggling coal out of North Korea, passed by Singapore on its way to Malaysia, according to a North Korea-watchdog firm. The vessel’s recent location broadcasts had been intermittent, which is a possible indicator that the ship had stopped in North Korea, said Leo Byrne, data and analytic director at NKPro, an information site run by the private firm Korea Risk Group. Most recently, the ship was moored along the east coast of Sumatra, northwest of Singapore.
According to the
March report by the UN’s Panel of Experts, or POE, the Jia Feng made port at Namp’o, North Korea, in January 2017, and then carried illicit coal to Malaysia in March. The ship made an additional coal run to Vietnam last June, turning off its automated indicator sharing capability, or AIS, to conceal its activities.
“Despite the PoE’s investigations, the Togolese-flagged bulk carrier has so far avoided both UN and U.S. sanctions, while the Malaysian Government declined to comment on its continuing visits to the southeast Asian nation,” Byrne said.