Shady shipments hiding behind a flag
By Keith Bradsher
The New York Times
HONG KONG When helicopter- borne Australian commandos stormed a freighter three years ago after it was spotted unloading 110 pounds of high- grade heroin off the coast of Australia, the ship proved to be registered in Tuvalu, a tiny island nation in the South Pacific.
When a Spanish warship stopped a freighter carrying cement to Yemen four years ago, the cargo vessel turned out to be carrying 15 Scud missiles as well and was registered in Cambodia.
The two freighters had something in common: Although registered elsewhere, both were owned by North Korea.
The incidents illustrated North Korea's adroit use of so-called flags of convenience to camouflage the movement of its cargo vessels as they engage in tasks that sometimes violate international laws.
The North Korean ploy could both simplify and complicate the implementation of the UN Security Council's resolution last Saturday authorizing countries to inspect cargo entering or leaving North Korea to see if it includes illicit weapons, shipping executives, lawyers and security experts said.
The use of flags of convenience could also weaken moves like Australia's decision Monday to ban North Korean- flagged vessels from its ports to protest the nuclear test.
But if Western nations suspect that a North Korean-owned vessel flying another country's flag is carrying illicit weapons, boarding the vessel could be simpler than if it carried North Korea's flag, said Jonathan Pollack, a professor of Asian and Pacific studies at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
A Western nation could ask the country that registered the vessel for permission to board it even if the vessel were not entering or leaving North Korean waters. Practically any country would be more cooperative about giving permission for a search than North Korea, Pollack said.
A North Korean crew might still resist boarding, however. The crew of the Tuvalu-registered freighter, the Pong Su, did so when chased by Australian forces for four days in 2003 before it was finally boarded and captured by the commandos.
But Pollack and other experts said that flags of convenience could still prove useful to North Korea in maintaining its arms trade despite the Security Council resolution.
One possibility would be for North Korea to try to smuggle out weapons or weapons components across its land border with China or Russia, and then to a Chinese or Russian port. The weapons could then be loaded on to a vessel secretly owned by North Korea but flying another country's flag - and perhaps be not closely watched by Western intelligence services as a result.
Or weapons could be loaded on a North Korean ship flying the North Korean flag, and the registration of the ship altered after it left port.
"In the middle of the night, they could change the name and change the flag," said Gary Wolfe, a maritime lawyer at Seward and Kissel, a New York law firm.
Still another possibility, shipping and security experts said, would be for a North Korean-flagged ship to transfer cargo to a North Korean ship carrying another flag, either in port or perhaps even mid-ocean if it were a calm day and the cargo small enough.
Changing the registration of a ship - and therefore its flag - is fairly simple. A ship owner simply sends the necessary paperwork to a country's ship registry, along with a fee of as little as $1,000.
Ship registries do require basic information about a vessel's length and tonnage. So if a ship of a certain size and displacement disappears from one ship's registry and a vessel of equal size and displacement pops up with a different name on another registry at the same time, they may be the same ship and could be identified with careful sleuthing, Wolfe said.
The Pong Su sailed from North Korea to Singapore in 2003 under a North Korean flag. The vessel then switched its registration to Tuvalu and sailed on to Australia, where witnesses saw a dinghy coming ashore with what proved to be the shipment of heroin.
The freighter was seized and later used as a bombing target by the Australian armed forces as a warning to drug traffickers. The North Korean government denied that it had been involved.
Without specifically mentioning flags of convenience, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned in Washington on Wednesday of the difficulty of monitoring North Korea's trade.
"There's so much moving around the world by land, sea and air that it is practically impossible - not impossible, but certainly it would take a lot of countries cooperating with a high degree of cohesion," and cohesion has been lacking, he said at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Alabama.
Until 2002, North Korea tended to register its ships as Cambodian, using an office that the Cambodian government had authorized in Singapore.
Marcus Hand, the Asia editor for Lloyd's List, the shipping industry newspaper, said that dozens of North Korean ships used to carry the Cambodian flag. He cautioned, however, that it is often difficult to know for sure who owns a ship, since ships are often held through various companies registered all over the world. No one outside North Korea really knows for sure how many cargo vessels the country has registered under other flags.
Cambodia canceled the right of its Singapore agents to register ships in 2002 after incidents in which Cambodian-registered ships were in such poor condition that ports were reluctant to let them berth, and a scandal in which a Cambodian-registered ship was alleged by France to have been transporting cocaine. The government of Cambodia ended up authorizing representatives in Busan, South Korea, to manage the country's ship registry.
Charlie Bach, managing director of the overhauled International Ship Registry of Cambodia, said in an e-mail message that there are no longer any North Korean ships carrying the Cambodian flag.
The mystery lies in where North Korea's ships are registering instead.
"If I were them and I were going to try to hide a ship, I would try to get it into one of the more reputable registries," Wolfe said. "If they had the money, they could do it."
HONG KONG When helicopter- borne Australian commandos stormed a freighter three years ago after it was spotted unloading 110 pounds of high- grade heroin off the coast of Australia, the ship proved to be registered in Tuvalu, a tiny island nation in the South Pacific.
When a Spanish warship stopped a freighter carrying cement to Yemen four years ago, the cargo vessel turned out to be carrying 15 Scud missiles as well and was registered in Cambodia.
The two freighters had something in common: Although registered elsewhere, both were owned by North Korea.
The incidents illustrated North Korea's adroit use of so-called flags of convenience to camouflage the movement of its cargo vessels as they engage in tasks that sometimes violate international laws.
The North Korean ploy could both simplify and complicate the implementation of the UN Security Council's resolution last Saturday authorizing countries to inspect cargo entering or leaving North Korea to see if it includes illicit weapons, shipping executives, lawyers and security experts said.
The use of flags of convenience could also weaken moves like Australia's decision Monday to ban North Korean- flagged vessels from its ports to protest the nuclear test.
But if Western nations suspect that a North Korean-owned vessel flying another country's flag is carrying illicit weapons, boarding the vessel could be simpler than if it carried North Korea's flag, said Jonathan Pollack, a professor of Asian and Pacific studies at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
A Western nation could ask the country that registered the vessel for permission to board it even if the vessel were not entering or leaving North Korean waters. Practically any country would be more cooperative about giving permission for a search than North Korea, Pollack said.
A North Korean crew might still resist boarding, however. The crew of the Tuvalu-registered freighter, the Pong Su, did so when chased by Australian forces for four days in 2003 before it was finally boarded and captured by the commandos.
But Pollack and other experts said that flags of convenience could still prove useful to North Korea in maintaining its arms trade despite the Security Council resolution.
One possibility would be for North Korea to try to smuggle out weapons or weapons components across its land border with China or Russia, and then to a Chinese or Russian port. The weapons could then be loaded on to a vessel secretly owned by North Korea but flying another country's flag - and perhaps be not closely watched by Western intelligence services as a result.
Or weapons could be loaded on a North Korean ship flying the North Korean flag, and the registration of the ship altered after it left port.
"In the middle of the night, they could change the name and change the flag," said Gary Wolfe, a maritime lawyer at Seward and Kissel, a New York law firm.
Still another possibility, shipping and security experts said, would be for a North Korean-flagged ship to transfer cargo to a North Korean ship carrying another flag, either in port or perhaps even mid-ocean if it were a calm day and the cargo small enough.
Changing the registration of a ship - and therefore its flag - is fairly simple. A ship owner simply sends the necessary paperwork to a country's ship registry, along with a fee of as little as $1,000.
Ship registries do require basic information about a vessel's length and tonnage. So if a ship of a certain size and displacement disappears from one ship's registry and a vessel of equal size and displacement pops up with a different name on another registry at the same time, they may be the same ship and could be identified with careful sleuthing, Wolfe said.
The Pong Su sailed from North Korea to Singapore in 2003 under a North Korean flag. The vessel then switched its registration to Tuvalu and sailed on to Australia, where witnesses saw a dinghy coming ashore with what proved to be the shipment of heroin.
The freighter was seized and later used as a bombing target by the Australian armed forces as a warning to drug traffickers. The North Korean government denied that it had been involved.
Without specifically mentioning flags of convenience, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned in Washington on Wednesday of the difficulty of monitoring North Korea's trade.
"There's so much moving around the world by land, sea and air that it is practically impossible - not impossible, but certainly it would take a lot of countries cooperating with a high degree of cohesion," and cohesion has been lacking, he said at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Alabama.
Until 2002, North Korea tended to register its ships as Cambodian, using an office that the Cambodian government had authorized in Singapore.
Marcus Hand, the Asia editor for Lloyd's List, the shipping industry newspaper, said that dozens of North Korean ships used to carry the Cambodian flag. He cautioned, however, that it is often difficult to know for sure who owns a ship, since ships are often held through various companies registered all over the world. No one outside North Korea really knows for sure how many cargo vessels the country has registered under other flags.
Cambodia canceled the right of its Singapore agents to register ships in 2002 after incidents in which Cambodian-registered ships were in such poor condition that ports were reluctant to let them berth, and a scandal in which a Cambodian-registered ship was alleged by France to have been transporting cocaine. The government of Cambodia ended up authorizing representatives in Busan, South Korea, to manage the country's ship registry.
Charlie Bach, managing director of the overhauled International Ship Registry of Cambodia, said in an e-mail message that there are no longer any North Korean ships carrying the Cambodian flag.
The mystery lies in where North Korea's ships are registering instead.
"If I were them and I were going to try to hide a ship, I would try to get it into one of the more reputable registries," Wolfe said. "If they had the money, they could do it."
When a Spanish warship stopped a freighter carrying cement to Yemen four years ago, the cargo vessel turned out to be carrying 15 Scud missiles as well and was registered in Cambodia.
The two freighters had something in common: Although registered elsewhere, both were owned by North Korea.
The incidents illustrated North Korea's adroit use of so-called flags of convenience to camouflage the movement of its cargo vessels as they engage in tasks that sometimes violate international laws.
The North Korean ploy could both simplify and complicate the implementation of the UN Security Council's resolution last Saturday authorizing countries to inspect cargo entering or leaving North Korea to see if it includes illicit weapons, shipping executives, lawyers and security experts said.
The use of flags of convenience could also weaken moves like Australia's decision Monday to ban North Korean- flagged vessels from its ports to protest the nuclear test.
But if Western nations suspect that a North Korean-owned vessel flying another country's flag is carrying illicit weapons, boarding the vessel could be simpler than if it carried North Korea's flag, said Jonathan Pollack, a professor of Asian and Pacific studies at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
A Western nation could ask the country that registered the vessel for permission to board it even if the vessel were not entering or leaving North Korean waters. Practically any country would be more cooperative about giving permission for a search than North Korea, Pollack said.
A North Korean crew might still resist boarding, however. The crew of the Tuvalu-registered freighter, the Pong Su, did so when chased by Australian forces for four days in 2003 before it was finally boarded and captured by the commandos.
But Pollack and other experts said that flags of convenience could still prove useful to North Korea in maintaining its arms trade despite the Security Council resolution.
One possibility would be for North Korea to try to smuggle out weapons or weapons components across its land border with China or Russia, and then to a Chinese or Russian port. The weapons could then be loaded on to a vessel secretly owned by North Korea but flying another country's flag - and perhaps be not closely watched by Western intelligence services as a result.
Or weapons could be loaded on a North Korean ship flying the North Korean flag, and the registration of the ship altered after it left port.
"In the middle of the night, they could change the name and change the flag," said Gary Wolfe, a maritime lawyer at Seward and Kissel, a New York law firm.
Still another possibility, shipping and security experts said, would be for a North Korean-flagged ship to transfer cargo to a North Korean ship carrying another flag, either in port or perhaps even mid-ocean if it were a calm day and the cargo small enough.
Changing the registration of a ship - and therefore its flag - is fairly simple. A ship owner simply sends the necessary paperwork to a country's ship registry, along with a fee of as little as $1,000.
Ship registries do require basic information about a vessel's length and tonnage. So if a ship of a certain size and displacement disappears from one ship's registry and a vessel of equal size and displacement pops up with a different name on another registry at the same time, they may be the same ship and could be identified with careful sleuthing, Wolfe said.
The Pong Su sailed from North Korea to Singapore in 2003 under a North Korean flag. The vessel then switched its registration to Tuvalu and sailed on to Australia, where witnesses saw a dinghy coming ashore with what proved to be the shipment of heroin.
The freighter was seized and later used as a bombing target by the Australian armed forces as a warning to drug traffickers. The North Korean government denied that it had been involved.
Without specifically mentioning flags of convenience, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned in Washington on Wednesday of the difficulty of monitoring North Korea's trade.
"There's so much moving around the world by land, sea and air that it is practically impossible - not impossible, but certainly it would take a lot of countries cooperating with a high degree of cohesion," and cohesion has been lacking, he said at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Alabama.
Until 2002, North Korea tended to register its ships as Cambodian, using an office that the Cambodian government had authorized in Singapore.
Marcus Hand, the Asia editor for Lloyd's List, the shipping industry newspaper, said that dozens of North Korean ships used to carry the Cambodian flag. He cautioned, however, that it is often difficult to know for sure who owns a ship, since ships are often held through various companies registered all over the world. No one outside North Korea really knows for sure how many cargo vessels the country has registered under other flags.
Cambodia canceled the right of its Singapore agents to register ships in 2002 after incidents in which Cambodian-registered ships were in such poor condition that ports were reluctant to let them berth, and a scandal in which a Cambodian-registered ship was alleged by France to have been transporting cocaine. The government of Cambodia ended up authorizing representatives in Busan, South Korea, to manage the country's ship registry.
Charlie Bach, managing director of the overhauled International Ship Registry of Cambodia, said in an e-mail message that there are no longer any North Korean ships carrying the Cambodian flag.
The mystery lies in where North Korea's ships are registering instead.
"If I were them and I were going to try to hide a ship, I would try to get it into one of the more reputable registries," Wolfe said. "If they had the money, they could do it."
HONG KONG When helicopter- borne Australian commandos stormed a freighter three years ago after it was spotted unloading 110 pounds of high- grade heroin off the coast of Australia, the ship proved to be registered in Tuvalu, a tiny island nation in the South Pacific.
When a Spanish warship stopped a freighter carrying cement to Yemen four years ago, the cargo vessel turned out to be carrying 15 Scud missiles as well and was registered in Cambodia.
The two freighters had something in common: Although registered elsewhere, both were owned by North Korea.
The incidents illustrated North Korea's adroit use of so-called flags of convenience to camouflage the movement of its cargo vessels as they engage in tasks that sometimes violate international laws.
The North Korean ploy could both simplify and complicate the implementation of the UN Security Council's resolution last Saturday authorizing countries to inspect cargo entering or leaving North Korea to see if it includes illicit weapons, shipping executives, lawyers and security experts said.
The use of flags of convenience could also weaken moves like Australia's decision Monday to ban North Korean- flagged vessels from its ports to protest the nuclear test.
But if Western nations suspect that a North Korean-owned vessel flying another country's flag is carrying illicit weapons, boarding the vessel could be simpler than if it carried North Korea's flag, said Jonathan Pollack, a professor of Asian and Pacific studies at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
A Western nation could ask the country that registered the vessel for permission to board it even if the vessel were not entering or leaving North Korean waters. Practically any country would be more cooperative about giving permission for a search than North Korea, Pollack said.
A North Korean crew might still resist boarding, however. The crew of the Tuvalu-registered freighter, the Pong Su, did so when chased by Australian forces for four days in 2003 before it was finally boarded and captured by the commandos.
But Pollack and other experts said that flags of convenience could still prove useful to North Korea in maintaining its arms trade despite the Security Council resolution.
One possibility would be for North Korea to try to smuggle out weapons or weapons components across its land border with China or Russia, and then to a Chinese or Russian port. The weapons could then be loaded on to a vessel secretly owned by North Korea but flying another country's flag - and perhaps be not closely watched by Western intelligence services as a result.
Or weapons could be loaded on a North Korean ship flying the North Korean flag, and the registration of the ship altered after it left port.
"In the middle of the night, they could change the name and change the flag," said Gary Wolfe, a maritime lawyer at Seward and Kissel, a New York law firm.
Still another possibility, shipping and security experts said, would be for a North Korean-flagged ship to transfer cargo to a North Korean ship carrying another flag, either in port or perhaps even mid-ocean if it were a calm day and the cargo small enough.
Changing the registration of a ship - and therefore its flag - is fairly simple. A ship owner simply sends the necessary paperwork to a country's ship registry, along with a fee of as little as $1,000.
Ship registries do require basic information about a vessel's length and tonnage. So if a ship of a certain size and displacement disappears from one ship's registry and a vessel of equal size and displacement pops up with a different name on another registry at the same time, they may be the same ship and could be identified with careful sleuthing, Wolfe said.
The Pong Su sailed from North Korea to Singapore in 2003 under a North Korean flag. The vessel then switched its registration to Tuvalu and sailed on to Australia, where witnesses saw a dinghy coming ashore with what proved to be the shipment of heroin.
The freighter was seized and later used as a bombing target by the Australian armed forces as a warning to drug traffickers. The North Korean government denied that it had been involved.
Without specifically mentioning flags of convenience, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned in Washington on Wednesday of the difficulty of monitoring North Korea's trade.
"There's so much moving around the world by land, sea and air that it is practically impossible - not impossible, but certainly it would take a lot of countries cooperating with a high degree of cohesion," and cohesion has been lacking, he said at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Alabama.
Until 2002, North Korea tended to register its ships as Cambodian, using an office that the Cambodian government had authorized in Singapore.
Marcus Hand, the Asia editor for Lloyd's List, the shipping industry newspaper, said that dozens of North Korean ships used to carry the Cambodian flag. He cautioned, however, that it is often difficult to know for sure who owns a ship, since ships are often held through various companies registered all over the world. No one outside North Korea really knows for sure how many cargo vessels the country has registered under other flags.
Cambodia canceled the right of its Singapore agents to register ships in 2002 after incidents in which Cambodian-registered ships were in such poor condition that ports were reluctant to let them berth, and a scandal in which a Cambodian-registered ship was alleged by France to have been transporting cocaine. The government of Cambodia ended up authorizing representatives in Busan, South Korea, to manage the country's ship registry.
Charlie Bach, managing director of the overhauled International Ship Registry of Cambodia, said in an e-mail message that there are no longer any North Korean ships carrying the Cambodian flag.
The mystery lies in where North Korea's ships are registering instead.
"If I were them and I were going to try to hide a ship, I would try to get it into one of the more reputable registries," Wolfe said. "If they had the money, they could do it."
4 comments:
I amaze to hear that many ships registered Cambodian flags. Is it and ad or a bribe. It alsomst every time there is a situation on the sea, Cambodia is the country. What department in Cambodia issued the registration?
I knew one-eyed Jackoff was Kim Jong Il's butt buddy I just never realized how close though.
To commentator @10:43PM
It is normally under control of the Ministry of Transport, Department of what, i'm not sure, sorry! It sounds something like "department of sea transport" .. You may call Mr. Lou Kim Chhun, General Director of Sihanook-ville International Port, or anyone of his staff; everybody knows his number very well.
You asked, i answered.
Hah! are you kidding, Mr. Paralis?
Kim Jong Il is also one-sided blind?!! What's a coincidence!! in the legend "Pirate of the Carabeans", the one-sided blind "Captain Jack" was hero; on N.Korea ships, "Captain Kim" (also one-side blind?); so it must be another one-sided blind pirate who is cruising our damaged ship "Cambodia" toward H..., to what? to Happiness? i don't think so; to HELL?!!!! Oh Gosh! Oh Ghost! Oh God!
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