Another Suspicious North Korean Vessel in Cuba

capitolhillcubans

Mu Du Bong/ www.vesseltracker.com

Last year, the Chong Chon Gang was caught red-handed smuggling 240 tons of illegal weapons from Cuba to North Korea.

There were at least seven other North Korean vessels that had made similar trips to Cuba in recent years. Who know what got away.

Currently, there is another vessel, Mu Du Bong, making the same route and trying to avoid detection.

Could the Cuban and North Korean regimes be so brazen?

Absolutely, for they have -- thus far - gotten away scot-free for their previous illegal behavior.

As we warned earlier this year on this issue -- inaction breeds impunity.

From Forbes:

North Korean Ship Tests the Waters Near America's Shores

It’s not often that North Korean-flagged freighters turn up near America’s shores, but when they do, they deserve attention. North Korea has a prolific record of arms smuggling, narcotics dealing, counterfeiting, terrorist ties and missile and nuclear proliferation. So, let’s hope U.S. authorities are keeping a close eye on a North Korean cargo ship called the Mu Du Bong, which late last month called at Cuba, then vanished from the commercial shipping grid for more than a week. This past Thursday, July 10, the Mu Du Bong reappeared at Havana, then began steaming north of Cuba, and as of this writing is cruising the Gulf of Mexico, not all that far from the Mexican port of Tampico — or for that matter, the coast of Texas.

The Mu Du Bong’s mission could be entirely legitimate. But its behavior bears some disturbing similarities to last year’s voyage of another North Korean freighter, the Chong Chon Gang, which last summer sailed into the Caribbean, picked up an illicit load of weapons in Cuba, and got caught trying to smuggle its cargo through the Panama Canal.

Acting on a tip, Panamanian authorities searched the Chong Chon Gang. They discovered some 240 tons of arms and related materiel, including two disassembled MiG-21 jet fighters, additional MiG engines, surface-to-air missile system components, night vision goggles and ammunition — all hidden under more than 200,000 bags of Cuban sugar.

Documents found on board the Chong Chon Gang proved a trove of information for members of the United Nations Panel of Experts on North Korea sanctions, who summarized some of their findings in a UN report released this past March. The U.N. investigators were able to reconstruct an array of techniques with which the Chong Chon Gang tried to hide its illicit mission. They concluded that both the arms shipment and the related transaction between North Korea and Cuba had violated U.N. sanctions on North Korea.

The U.N. report describes how the Chong Chon Gang set out in mid-2013 from North Korea, took on fuel in a Russian Far East port, crossed the Pacific and transited the Panama Canal into the Caribbean. The ship then disappeared from the commercial shipping grid by switching off its onboard transponder, the Automatic Identification System (AIS), with which vessels for reasons of maritime safety are required to signal their identity and real-time location.

While its transponder was switched off, the Chong Chon Gang discharged cargo in Havana, then drifted around north of Cuba for about 10 days, then made a covert stop at the Cuban port of Mariel — where the weapons were loaded on board. The ship then called at another Cuban port, Puerto Padre, where the sugar, a legitimate cargo, was loaded on top on the contraband.

Now comes the Mu Du Bong, a North Korean-flagged general cargo ship, launched in 1984. This vessel is named after a hill in North Korea near Mount Paektu, a locale central to the mythology with which North Korea’s totalitarian regime has deified its founding tyrant, Kim Il Sung.

According to ship-tracking information on Lloyd’s, the Mu Du Bong has spent the past three years plying the coast of China, close to North Korea. In April, that changed. The Mu Du Bong called at the Russian Far East port of Nakhodka, then crossed the Pacific, transited the Panama Canal in mid-June, and made for Cuba. On June 25, she signaled on AIS a few miles off the port of Mariel; then signaled again on June 29 and 30 from the nearby port of Havana.

Then, for nine straight days, from July 1-9, the Mu Du Bong stopped signaling on AIS, and disappeared from the commercial shipping grid. It’s possible the ship was simply sitting quietly at anchor. But there are echoes here not only of the Chong Chon Gang, but of a number of other North Korean-flagged freighters which over the years have followed this pattern of dropping off the grid in the vicinity of Cuba. In congressional testimony last September, illicit-trafficking expert Hugh Griffiths, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, described this practice as “a common risk indicator of maritime trafficking.” (Iran in recent years has used the same tactic to mask sanctions-busting activities of its oil tankers) [...]

On the Equasis shipping database, the Mu Du Bong is listed as owned by the Mudubong Shipping Co Ltd, in Pyongyang, with an address care of Taedonggang Sonbak Co Ltd, also in Pyongyang. According to the 2014 UN panel of experts report on North Korea sanctions, the commercial operator for Taedonggang Sonbak is another Pyongyang-based company, called Ocean Maritime Management Company Ltd — which was the commercial operator for the arms-smuggling Chong Chon Gang, and “played a key role in arranging the shipment of the concealed cargo of arms and related materiel.”

The questions multiply. Who is providing insurance for the Mu Du Bong? (Lloyd’s, usually a source for such information, shows nothing). With a number of North Korean banks under U.S. sanctions, who paid the fees for the Mu Du Bong’s passage last month through the Panama Canal?

What might the U.S. do? To date, the U.S. government has not imposed sanctions on North Korean vessels. If the Mu Du Bong heads home by way of the Panama Canal, presumably Panama’s authorities could be asked, politely, to check the cargo. But there is no guarantee this ship will head back through the canal. This is not the Mu Du Bong’s first trip to Cuba. She called there previously, in 2009. On that trip, the Mu Du Bong entered the Caribbean via the Panama Canal, but exited by a different route. After calling at Cuba she plied the Atlantic for months between Latin America and West Africa, with port calls in Brazil, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Senegal, before heading around the Horn of Africa and back to East Asia with stops enroute in Qatar, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Singapore.

Perhaps it’s unlikely that North Korea would so brazenly attempt another smuggling run so close to America’s shores, so soon after the seizure of the Chong Chon Gang. But in dispatching the Mu Du Bong via the Panama Canal to Cuba, Pyongyang is at the very least sticking a thumb in America’s eye, and quite possibly testing the waters for future smuggling runs.