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Panama Seizes North Korea-Flagged Ship for Weapons Panama Seizes Korean Ship, and Sugar-Coated Arms Parts
(about 3 hours later)
The Panamanian authorities impounded a rusting North Korean freighter on a voyage from Cuba toward the Panama Canal and back to its home country, and said the ship was carrying missile system components cloaked in a cargo of sugar. The arms would appear to represent a significant violation of United Nations sanctions imposed on North Korea. It started with a tip: that a rusty North Korean freighter, which had not plied the Caribbean in years, was carrying drugs or arms amid tens of thousands of sacks of Cuban brown sugar.
President Ricardo Martinelli of Panama, who announced the seizure late Monday in a radio interview, posted a photograph in a Twitter message of what he described as “sophisticated missile equipment” found in the cargo hold of the vessel, the 450-foot Chong Chon Gang, a 36-year-old freighter that has rarely plied the waters of the Western Hemisphere. It ended with a five-day, eventually violent standoff between Panamanian marines and 35 North Korean crew members, armed largely with sticks, who were subdued and arrested while their captain, claiming he was having a heart attack, tried to commit suicide. Underneath all that sugar, it turned out, were parts for what appeared to be elements of an antiquated Soviet-era missile radar system that was headed, evidently, to North Korea — a country that usually exports missile technology around the world, rather than bringing it in.
Mr. Martinelli and other Panamanian officials said the vessel’s 35 crew members were taken into custody after they violently resisted efforts to redirect the vessel to the Panamanian port of Manzanillo, at the Atlantic end of the canal, and that the captain tried to commit suicide after the ship was detained. The captain’s condition was unclear. On Tuesday, American and Panamanian officials were still trying to solve the mystery of the vessel, the Chong Chon Gang, and to understand why its crew had fought so hard to repel a boarding party as it tried to traverse the Panama Canal. After all, the equipment they were protecting, and which American officials speculated was headed to North Korea for an upgrade, would make a nice exhibit in a museum of cold war military artifacts.
The president said the ship would undergo a thorough inspection to look for any more contraband. “We’re going to keep unloading the ship and figure out exactly what was inside,” he said. “You cannot go around shipping undeclared weapons of war through the Panama Canal.” “We’re talking old,” one official briefed on the episode said. “When this stuff was new, Castro was plotting revolutions.”
José Raúl Mulino, Panama’s minister of security, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that the suspect cargo had been found in two containers and that “evidently, they are armaments.” Mr. Mulino said all 250,000 sugar sacks aboard would be removed before the ship could be completely investigated. But the episode also offered a window on the desperate measures North Korea is taking to keep hard currency and goods flowing, at a time when its ships are tracked everywhere, old customers like Syria and Iran are facing sanctions and scrutiny of their own, and its partners have dwindled to a few outliers.
The crew members were detained and taken to a naval base after they disconnected crane cables aboard their ship, in what Mr. Mulino called an act of “rebellion and sabotage.” The role of Cuba is a particular element of the mystery — at a time when Washington has talked of relaxing restrictions and Cuba’s leadership has seemed more eager to improve its ties with the West than to strengthen relations with cold war-era partners.
Mr. Martinelli said the ship had been stopped initially on suspicion of carrying narcotics. But it is unusual for Panama Canal authorities to detain or search any ship that is merely passing through the waterway and not stopping in Panama to load or unload cargo. Even by the measure of bizarre stories about North Korea’s black-market dealings, the events of the past five days in Panama set some records. In recent times North Korean shipments to Myanmar and the Middle East have been tracked and in some cases intercepted, a testament to how closely American spy satellites follow the country’s aging cargo fleet. But rarely have North Korean sailors tried so intently to stop a boarding and inspection, in this case cutting the cables to cranes that move cargo in an apparent effort to keep the cargo buried under sugar. (Officials were wondering whether the sugar was a barter payment for work on the radar system.)
Mr. Mulino said ship searches were “not unusual when we have information produced from international cooperation we have with many countries.” At the same time, Mr. Mulino said, a tip to search the North Korean vessel came from Panamanian intelligence. He declined to say whether other countries had provided information. “What I can say for sure is that looking at illicit North Korea trade, their ships in particular, these guys are stumped for money, they are incredibly poor,” said Hugh Griffiths, an arms trafficking specialist at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “Business deals that might look silly to us don’t look ridiculous to them.”
As of midday Tuesday there was no comment on the ship seizure by officials from either North Korea or Cuba. The two countries, known for their antipathy to the United States, have formed close bonds over the years, partly as a consequence of an American-led effort to ostracize them internationally, North Korea in particular. Panama’s president, Ricardo Martinelli, who visited the vessel after the crew had been subdued, announced the discovery in a radio broadcast on Monday night, making it clear that the North Korean ship was in blatant violation of numerous United Nations sanctions. He even posted a photograph of the contraband on his Twitter account.
The United Nations has imposed broad sanctions on North Korea that seek to curtail its ability to export and import weaponry, particularly missile components and technology. Earlier this month, the United States blacklisted a general in Myanmar, Thein Htay, for buying military goods from North Korea. Based on that photo, IHS Jane’s Intelligence, a defense consultancy, identified it as an SNR-75 “Fan Song” fire control radar for the SA-2 family of surface-to-air missiles. The component is important for guiding a missile to its target; the Soviets began building similar systems in the mid-’50s, well ahead of the Cuban missile crisis.
American officials say North Korea’s arms trade has helped finance the country’s nuclear and missile ambitions. In February, the North carried out its third nuclear test, a detonation that led to a tightened round of sanctions imposed by the United Nations and supported by North Korea’s longtime ally and benefactor, China. “One possibility is that Cuba could be sending the system to North Korea for an upgrade,” IHS Jane’s said in a statement. “In this case, it would likely be returned to Cuba and the cargo of sugar could be a payment for the services.”
The seizure comes as Panama and South Korea, the North’s sworn enemy, have been strengthening ties and exploring a possible free trade agreement. But IHS Jane’s added that the radar equipment could also have been en route to North Korea to augment North Korea’s air defense network, which it said was based on obsolete weapons, missiles and radars.
At the same time, North Korea and Cuba have been further strengthening ties as well. Two weeks ago the North Korean armed forces chief of staff, Kim Kyok-sik, visited Cuba and met with President Raul Castro, Cuban news media reported. Such a visit by a high-ranking North Korea official like Mr. Kim did not go unnoticed elsewhere. That raised the possibility that other elements of the shipment were aboard, or on other ships.
“There are very few states where the North Korean chief of staff is welcomed for a high-level meeting,” Hugh Griffiths, an international arms trafficking expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said in a telephone interview. “We’re going to keep unloading the ship and figure out exactly what was inside,” President Martinelli said. “You cannot go around shipping undeclared weapons of war through the Panama Canal.”
Mr. Griffiths said that against the context of Mr. Kim’s visit to Cuba, a seizure of arms on a North Korean vessel that had recently departed from Cuba would not be entirely surprising. There was no comment on Tuesday from North Korea or Cuba on the seizure of the vessel.
Still, he said, it was unusual that this particular vessel was in the area. He said the ship’s itinerary history showed that it had spent most of its working life in Asian and European waters. The Chong Chon Gang, a 36-year-old freighter, had its own peculiar history, and this was not the first time the vessel had encountered run-ins with maritime authorities. It had been stopped in 2010 for carrying narcotics and ammunition, Mr. Griffiths said. He also said the vessel had been attacked by Somali pirates.
“This vessel carried a very high level of risk, given the voyage anomalies,” Mr. Griffiths said. According to IHS Fairplay, a London-based vessel monitoring service, the freighter had not traveled the Western Hemisphere in at least four years. The monitoring data shows it visited Panama in 2008 and Brazil in 2009.
He called it a “raggedy old ship with spotty records.” Mr. Griffiths noted that its reappearance, even with the cover of a Cuban cargo of sugar, was bound to attract attention. He said interest in the vessel’s itinerary in recent weeks, which included a stopover in Havana, may have been heightened because of the July 3 visit to Cuba of North Korea’s top military commander, who conferred with President Raúl Castro. Cuban and North Korean news media publicized the trip.
In an e-mailed statement, IHS Jane’s Intelligence, the defense consulting firm, said it had identified the equipment shown in the images of the seized cargo as an SNR-75 “Fan Song” fire control radar for the SA-2 family of surface-to-air missiles. “There are very few states where the North Korean chief of staff is welcomed for a high-level meeting,” Mr. Griffiths said.
“One possibility is that Cuba could be sending the system to North Korea for an upgrade,” it said. “In this case, it would likely be returned to Cuba and the cargo of sugar could be a payment for the services.” American spy satellites regularly track North Korean vessels — but usually to stop proliferation, not drugs. And as the intelligence agencies discovered several years ago, failure to monitor can lead to other lapses: the United States missed the construction of a North Korean nuclear reactor in Syria until Israeli officials brought evidence of it to Washington in 2007. Israel destroyed the facility later that year.
But IHS Jane’s added that the fire control radar equipment could also have been en route to North Korea to augment North Korea’s air defense network, which it said was based on obsolete weapons, missiles and radars. Matthew Godsey, editor of the Risk Report, a publication of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a proliferation research group in Washington that follows North Korean behavior, said the Chong Chon Gang may also have traveled in the region undetected previously by turning off its satellite transponder, used by tracking services to monitor vessels for their own safety.
After North Korea’s nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests in recent years, the United Nations Security Council has adopted a series of resolutions to ban trade in big and unconventional weapons with North Korea and tighten restrictions aimed at denying financial services that could contribute to the country’s missile and nuclear programs. “I think North Korean vessels have been known to do that,” he said. “It’s dangerous, but when you’re carrying dangerous stuff it can happen. When you have a captain willing to kill himself, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
There have been occasional crackdowns involving illicit trafficking in arms and luxury goods. In August last year, Japan seized a cargo of aluminum alloys originating from North Korea, bound for Myanmar and suspected of being connected to a nuclear program, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported last November. Mr. Martinelli and other Panamanian officials said the vessel’s 35 crew members were taken into custody on Sunday after they violently resisted efforts to redirect the vessel to the Panamanian port of Manzanillo, at the Atlantic end of the canal. He did not explain how the captain sought to commit suicide, and the captain’s condition was unknown.
A shipment of missile-related items from North Korea and bound for Syria on board a Chinese-flagged ship was interdicted in the South Korean port of Pusan in May last year, the Kyodo News agency of Japan reported last November. José Raúl Mulino, Panama’s minister of security, said in a telephone interview that the entire crew had been detained at a naval base after committing what he called an act of “rebellion and sabotage” in attempting to resist the boarding of the vessel. It was unclear whether they would face criminal prosecution or be sent back to North Korea.
In May, the United States Justice Department announced the arrest of a Taiwanese father and son on charges of conspiring to send American-made machines that could be used in the production of weapons of mass destruction to Taiwan. Since the father had a history of working for North Korea, the Justice Department said, it believed the goods may have been sent onward to North Korea. Mr. Mulino said that the suspect cargo was hidden in two containers behind the sugar, and that all the thousands of sugar sacks aboard would be removed before the ship could be completely investigated. The process could take awhile, he said, because the crew had disabled the unloading cranes, forcing the Panamanians to remove the bags by hand.
Despite the tightening of sanctions, North Korea was still believed to be able to exploit loopholes in their implementation. In a report in June last year, the United Nations sanctions committee said that North Korea had demonstrated “elaborate techniques” to evade the sanctions, though their tightening appeared to have slowed its illicit transactions and made them “significantly more difficult and expensive.”

Reporting was contributed by Anne-Sophie Bolon from London; Raphael Minder from Paris; Gerry Mullany from Hong Kong; Choe Sang-hun from Seoul, South Korea; and Karla Zabludovsky from Mexico City.

North Korea has increasingly resorted to cash-only transactions, using intermediaries and its own diplomats to hand-carry bulk cash, said South Korean officials familiar with the implementation of United Nations sanctions.
The United Nations resolution adopted in March, after the North’s third nuclear test in February, extended sanctions to bulk cash couriers suspected of involvement in the country’s illicit trade.
South Korean officials said the North also used bank accounts opened in borrowed names in countries like China to disburse funds to make the task of tracking them more difficult. The Bank of China shut the account of North Korea’s state-run Foreign Trade Bank after the United Nations sanctions in March.

Rick Gladstone reported from New York, Gerry Mullany from Hong Kong and Choe Sang-hun from Seoul, South Korea. Reporting was contributed by Raphael Minder from Paris,  Anne-Sophie Bolon from London and Karla Zabludovsky from Mexico City.