In May last year, NK Pro examined President Moon Jae-in’s proposals for inter-Korean cooperation and suggested that he could still achieve the substance of his “sunshine policy” without violating UN sanctions, though suggested sanctions would restrict the forms of inter-Korean cooperation available.

The reason inter-Korean cooperation could still be pursued was, essentially, because sanctions were at that point sufficiently ‘targeted’ and narrow enough to be accommodated within designs for inter-Korean cooperation, and because the sanctions regime left a lot of discretion to UN member states (for example, paragraph 11(b) of UNSCR 2321). Competing interpretations of one of