North Korea has traditionally earned much-needed foreign currency by
sending its citizens to work overseas. Under UN-sanctions they were supposed to have been repatriated by the end of 2019, but significant numbers of North Korean labourers have reportedly continued to work in Russia and China, as well as in Laos and Vietnam, after the deadline.
Matsegora left open the possibility for another showdown with the UN over sanctions after he suggested that North Korean factories and power stations built during the Soviet era could use equipment built in the Donbas region, where Moscow-backed forces have been fighting Ukraine since 2014.
This would contravene a UN ban, imposed in late 2017, on North Korea acquiring industrial machinery, electronic equipment and other items.
Matsegora acknowledged that sanctions could frustrate attempts to establish a trade link between the republics and North Korea, but said economic ties were “absolutely justified”, NK News said.
Go Myong-hyun, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, was quoted by NK News as saying that economic cooperation would confirm that Russia – a permanent member of the UN security council that has imposed sanctions on the North – had become a rogue state.
“Once Russia violates the very sanctions it had authorised, the security council would be critically undermined,” Go said.
www.hs.fi
