In 2006 the UN Security Council gave member states a month to report on what they’d done to implement its sanctions against the DPRK, but 10 years on almost half have still not replied. One reason is that the sanctions are quite difficult to understand.

Journalists routinely make basic errors in interpreting the sanctions; for example, reporting that the restrictions on the DPRK’s coal exports amount to a total ban when the “livelihoods” exemption (paragraph 29(a)) is so wide as to permit business-as-usual.

Set out over 14,000 words, with some sentences of greater than 200 words in