Foreign vessels known to smuggle oil to North Korea carried out ship-to-ship transfers outside Nampho and off the country’s west coast starting in 2021, an upcoming U.N. report states, as an apparent shift in the country’s maritime operations creates new hotspots for illicit activity.

The uptick in ship-to-ship transfers in the area, which sits just west of the North Korean port city of Nampho, appears to be a relatively recent response to Pyongyang’s stringent COVID-19 border controls that have made it impossible for foreign vessels to dock.

According to a draft U.N. Panel of Experts report seen by NK News, several vessels known to smuggle oil into the country entered a portion of the Korea Bay within North Korea’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) last year. These included ships not officially flagged under any state, including the Xing Ming Yang 888 (IMO 8410847), Subblic (IMO 8126082), Hokong (IMO 9006758), New Konk (IMO 90136387) and Unica (IMO 8514306). 

Most notably, imagery in the report appears to show the Diamond 8 (IMO 9132612), the largest foreign-flagged tanker known to smuggle oil to North Korea, conducting a ship-to-ship transfer with the sanctioned Chon Ma San (IMO 8660313) in early Aug. 2021.

The Diamond 8, a 9,200-ton capacity oil tanker implicated in other ongoing U.N. investigations, can deliver enough refined petroleum to surpass a U.N.-set cap on North Korea’s oil imports in just eight deliveries. 

Additional imagery in the report verified by NK Pro shows the Xing Ming Yang 888 conducting a possible ship-to-ship transfer roughly 60 miles (100 km) west of Nampho with a ship matching the profile of the DPRK-flagged Rye Song Gang 1 (IMO 7389704).

Two other ships, believed to be the Hokong and Subblic, idled nearby from mid to late April, suggesting they were waiting to rendezvous with other vessels.

An NK Pro review of satellite imagery for the entire year found that the Subblic returned to the same area in June and loitered there for a week, suggesting the location is an established rendezvous point.

Ships outside Nampho’s lock gate also occasionally engaged in ship-to-ship transfers, satellite imagery shows. Several apparent ship-to-ship transfers appeared to be between cargo vessels, while at least one transfer appeared to involve oil tankers.

Analysts with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) said late last year that North Korea likely surpassed the U.N.-set 500,000 barrel import limit in 2021. Still, the draft U.N. report says overall oil imports were “much lower” than previous years. 

North Korea imported as much as four million barrels of oil in 2019, according to a U.S. assessment provided to the U.N. Panel of Experts in 2020.

Edited by Bryan Betts