Global Security Newswire

North Korea acquired more than 100 tons of a chemical weapons precursor material from a South Korean businessman who shipped the it through China, South Korea’s Commerce Ministry announced yesterday, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, Sept. 22).

Between June and September last year, 107 tons of sodium cyanide were exported without Seoul’s approval to an importer in Dandong, China, on the North Korean border, according to a ministry statement. The unidentified Chinese firm then sent the shipment to a North Korean trading firm.

The dual-use chemical is subject to multilateral export control regimes to which South Korea is a signatory, according to AFP.

The ministry said it first learned of the illegal shipments October last year. The unidentified South Korean businessman was reported to prosecutors and in January received a jail sentence of 18 months suspended for two years.

The ministry also said authorities were checking a report that a Malaysian company exported 40 tons of sodium cyanide, 15 tons of which was acquired from South Korea, to North Korea last month, AFP reported (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Sept. 24).

South Korean officials also said today that they have increased monitoring to prevent such materials from again reaching North Korea, Korea Times reported.

Under South Korea’s trade laws, sodium cyanide is categorized as a strategic material, which requires special permission for trading, according to the Times.

“Although the government has made efforts to strengthen control of strategic material export, it is difficult to monitor the movement of exports via a third country,” said Commerce, Industry and Energy Ministry official Seo Young-joo.

“We are developing a comprehensive measure against the loopholes in exporting strategic materials. We will strengthen controls of strategic material exports to countries that attempt to re-export Korean imports to a third country outside of ‘International Multilateral Export Control’ like North Korea,” he said.

Seoul plans to create an online information system of strategic material trade guidelines, Seo said.

Between 2002 and August 2004, South Korea exported a total of 146,046 tons of sodium cyanide to 10 countries — including China Thailand, Russia and Indonesia — according to the ministry. Exports to China were the highest, reaching 42,399 tons (Seo Jee-yeon, Korea Times, Sept. 24).