Corea del Nord

There have been several previous cases of North Koreans sailing unintentionally into the South. They often use small, wooden boats that cannot be easily steered back onto their course once adrift.

In the past, authorities in the two countries would co-ordinate to send those who wished to return to the North back via their land border.

However, Pyongyang had cut off all inter-Korea communication lines in April 2023 amid heightened tensions.

Eight months later, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared that unification with the South is no longer possible.

The only known channels of communication that remain are the US-led United Nations Command and through the news media.

Seoul’s Ministry of Unification said it had tried twice to inform the North of its intention to send these six people home via the United Nations Command, but did not receive a response.

North Korean patrol vessels and fishing boats were spotted at the handover point on Wednesday morning, leading some observers to believe the two Koreas would have agreed on a repatriation plan “behind the scenes”.

“If you set a boat adrift in the vast ocean without any co-ordination, there’s a real risk it could drift away again,” says Nam Sung-wook, the former head of the Korea National Strategy Institute think tank.

Nam believes the six people will be interrogated at length when they return to the North.

“They’ll be grilled on whether they received any espionage training or overheard anything sensitive. [It will be] an intense process aimed at extracting every last piece of information,” he tells BBC Korean.

Once the investigation is over, they may be asked to help spread propaganda. Their desire to return to the North “strengthens the legitimacy of [Kim’s] regime”, adds Lim Eul-chul, a professor specialising in North Korean studies in Kyungnam University.

Michael Madden, a North Korea expert from the Stimson Center in Washington, pointed out that the boats drifted south when South Korea was being led by interim presidents following former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment.

“This may have delayed some decision making in both Koreas.

“Pyongyang certainly did not trust the Yoon remnants in South Korea, and both Koreas could have been open to accusations of an unlawful repatriation out of political expedience by the international community,” he said.

Wednesday’s repatriations have left some North Korean defectors baffled.

Activist Lee Min-bok says the six people “should have been given a chance to talk to defectors and learn more about South Korean society”.

“If I’d had the chance to speak with them, I would have told them the truth [about inter-Korean history] and warned them that they could eventually face punishment from the North Korean regime, simply because they had already experienced life in the South,” says Mr Lee, who used to float balloons with anti-Kim leaflets into the North.

However, Mr Lee and other activists are expecting crackdowns from South Korea’s new, pro-engagement administration.

Seoul’s National Assembly is currently debating a bill to ban such balloon launches.

Lee Jae-myung, who was elected South Korea’s president in June, has pledged to restart dialogue with Pyongyang and to reduce tensions between the two countries.

A week after he took office, South Korea’s military suspended its loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts across the border to North Korea – in what it described as a move to “restore trust in inter-Korean relations and achieve peace on the Korean Peninsula”.

Some analysts, however, do not expect a major improvement of ties between the Koreas.

North Korea has “built up solid co-operation” with Russia, and now has “little need” to engage the South, says Celeste Arrington, director of The George Washington University Institute for Korean Studies.

Public opinion in the South also suggests little appetite for engaging with the North, she says.

“Thus, there are few signals, if any, of North Korea wanting to re-establish lines of communication with the South, let alone a desire for meaningful warming of relations.”

A Chinese man is being held in Australia over his alleged role in a tobacco smuggling scheme that generated $700m (£570m) for North Korea.

Jin Guanghua now awaits extradition to the US, where he faces prosecution.

He is accused of supplying tobacco to Pyongyang for roughly a decade. It is unclear whether he contests the claim.

US authorities allege the tobacco trade allowed Kim Jong Un’s regime to make and sell counterfeit cigarettes to help fund its weapons programme.

Australia’s Attorney-General’s Department confirmed that Mr Jin had been detained in Melbourne in March last year, and that his “extradition matter” was ongoing.

“The individual is wanted to face prosecution in the US for a number of sanctions, bank fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy offences,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.

According to US court documents, the scheme Mr Jin was allegedly involved in was run through a series of North Korean “state owned companies” and financed by its banks.

“Chinese front companies” were then used to conduct transactions through the US financial system, bypassing sanctions and bringing millions of dollars into Pyongyang, the documents say.

Mr Jin is accused of setting up a number of entities in the UK, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates and China that “facilitated purchases of [the] tobacco” used.

The revenue from the scheme is believed to have supported North Korea’s ballistic and nuclear proliferation programmes, the US says.

Counterfeit cigarettes have been a “major source of income” for North Korea since the 1990s, according to US authorities. Made in Pyongyang, they are then sold using the fake packaging of well-known tobacco brands, and have turned up in countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam and Belize.

The illegal trade is thought to be one of Pyongyang’s largest sources of hard currency, according to the US government.

If found guilty, Mr Jin faces millions of dollars in fines and decades in prison.

His alleged co-conspirators have been named in court documents as Chinese nationals Qin Guoming, 60, and Han Linlin, 42.

Both are wanted by the FBI and are suspected to have ties to “China, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia”.

A bounty of $498,000 is on offer for any information that could assist with the arrest and conviction of either man.

For years, the US has imposed strict sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile activities.

In 2023, British American Tobacco was ordered to pay $635m in fines to the US government after one of its subsidiaries admitted to selling cigarettes to Pyongyang. The case was described by authorities as an “elaborate scheme to circumvent US sanctions”.

Vulnerable children and elderly people in North Korea are at risk of starvation, a UN expert has said.

The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the country blamed international sanctions and a Covid blockade for worsening food shortages.

As a result, North Koreans are struggling daily to “live a life of dignity” Tomas Ojea Quintana said.

He called for the sanctions – imposed over North Korea’s nuclear programmes – to be lifted to prevent a crisis.

North Korea is thought to be in dire economic straits.

It closed its borders to contain the spread of Covid-19. Trade with China has plummeted as a result. North Korea relies on China for food, fertiliser and fuel.

This week, leader Kim Jong-un admitted the country was facing a “grim situation”, the state news agency reported.

There have been reports that food prices had spiked, with NK News reporting in June that a kilogram of bananas costs $45 (£32).

In his latest report, Mr Quintana said the UN Security Council should look at easing the international sanctions and allow “humanitarian and life-saving assistance”.

The US under President Joe Biden has repeatedly said it is willing to talk to North Korea, but has demanded Pyongyang give up nuclear weapons before sanctions can be eased. North Korea has so far refused.

Earlier this week, Mr Kim blamed the US for stoking tensions, saying it needs to continue developing weapons for self-defence.

Despite its economic woes, North Korea has continued to build its weapons and missile arsenals.

It has recently tested what it claims to be new hypersonic and anti-aircraft missiles.

New York (CNN) North Korea‘s army of hackers stole hundreds of millions of dollars throughout much of 2020 to fund the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs in violation of international law, according to a confidential United Nations report.

The document accused the regime of leader Kim Jong Un of conducting “operations against financial institutions and virtual currency exchange houses” to pay for weapons and keep North Korea’s struggling economy afloat. One unnamed country that is a member of the UN claimed the hackers stole virtual assets worth $316.4 million dollars between 2019 and November 2020, according to the document.

The report also alleged that North Korea “produced fissile material, maintained nuclear facilities and upgraded its ballistic missile infrastructure” while continuing “to seek material and technology for these programs from overseas.”

North Korea has for years sought to develop powerful nuclear weapons and advanced missiles to pair them with, despite their immense cost and the fact that such a pursuit has turned the country into an international pariah barred by the UN from conducting almost any economic activity with other countries.

The UN investigators said one unnamed country assessed that it is “highly likely” North Korea could mount a nuclear device to a ballistic missile of any range, but it was still unclear if those missiles could successfully reenter the Earth’s atmosphere.

The report was authored by the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea, the body charged with monitoring the enforcement and efficacy of sanctions levied against the Kim regime as punishment for its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development.

Details from the report, which is currently confidential, were obtained by CNN through a diplomatic source at the United Nations Security Council, who shared portions of the document on the condition of anonymity. The Panel’s report is comprised of information received from UN member countries, intelligence agencies, the media and those who flee the country — not North Korea itself. These reports are typically released every sixth months, one in the early fall and another in early spring.

It’s unclear when this report will be released. Previous leaks have infuriated China and Russia, both members of the UN Security Council, leading to diplomatic standoffs and delays.

North Korea’s mission to the United Nations did not respond to CNN’s request for comment, but the claims in the report are in line with recent plans laid out by Kim. At an important political meeting last month, Kim said that North Korea would work to develop new, advanced weapons for its nuclear and missile programs, like tactical nuclear weapons and advanced warheads designed to penetrate missile defense systems to deter the United States, despite the rapport he developed with former US President Donald Trump.

Trump attempted to get Kim to give up his pursuit of nuclear weapons through high-level diplomacy, betting that his negotiating skills could help him achieve where past Presidents had failed. Trump became the first sitting US president to meet a North Korean leader in 2018 and then met him two more times, but failed to convince the young North Korean dictator to stop pursuing nuclear weapons.

It is unclear how exactly US President Joe Biden will move forward, though his aides have made it clear that allies South Korea and Japan will be heavily involved. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said last week that the administration is conducting a policy review and that he would not “get ahead of that review” in public.

A new source of income

The UN panel found that North Korea’s stringent Covid-19 border controls have affected the regime’s ability to bring in much needed hard currency from overseas. Pyongyang uses complex sanctions-evading schemes to keep its economy afloat and get around the stringent UN sanctions.

Coal has historically been one of North Korea’s most valuable exports — the Panel’s 2019 report found that Pyongyang collected $370 million by exporting coal, but shipments since July 2020 appear to have been suspended.

That is likely because North Korea severed almost all of its ties with the outside world in 2020 to prevent an influx of coronavirus cases, including cutting off almost all trade with Beijing, an economic lifeline the impoverished country needs to keep its people from going hungry. While that decision appears to have kept the pandemic at bay, it has brought the North Korean economy closer to the brink of collapse than it has been in decades.

Devastating storms, the punishing sanctions and the pandemic pummeled North Korea’s economy in 2020, and experts. Experts believe that North Korea may be further relying on its hackers to bring in revenue during the pandemic because of the border closures.

Cooperation with Iran

The report cited multiple unnamed nations who claimed that North Korea and Iran reengaged cooperation on long-range missile development projects, including trading critical parts needed to develop these weapons. North Korea successfully test-fired three intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBM) in 2017 and paraded a gargantuan, new ICBM at a public event in October.

Iran’s pursuit of similar technology and its current arsenal of ballistic missiles is a major flashpoint in Tehran’s long-running disputes with various Arab neighbors and the United States. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries have called for the curbing of Iran’s ballistic weapons, but Iran’s leaders have repeatedly said the arsenal is not up for negotiation.

Tehran appeared to deny that it was working with North Korea on missile technology. The report included comment from Iran’s UN Mission, which claimed in December that the UN Panel of Experts was given “false information and fabricated data may have been used in investigations and analyses of the Panel.”