China is investigating executives of a North Korean bank believed to finance the illicit procurement of arms and materials related to the isolated country’s banned nuclear programme, South Korea’s JoongAng Daily reported on Monday.
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Beijing has always been North Korea’s main source of aid and diplomatic support but is showing growing frustration with Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons in defiance of foreign pressure.
Kwangson Banking Corp. was ordered closed under United Nations sanctions imposed in March in response to the North’s nuclear tests but kept operating in secret in the border city of Dandong, Joongang Daily reported, citing unidentified sources.
Asked about the report of the Kwangson probe, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said he did “not understand” the situation.
In March, after the latest round of U.N. sanctions, the United Nations extended an asset freeze to all funds held overseas by the bank.
In its latest provocations, the North conducted its fifth and most powerful nuclear test early this month, only four days after firing off three ballistic missiles into the East Sea.
The JoongAng Daily said Chinese authorities were investigating a top official of the Kwangson Banking Corporation at its branch in the Chinese border city of Dandong.
The North was particularly outraged over recent flights by B-1B Lancer bombers, which are capable of dropping nuclear weapons, near the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Koreas in a display of power after the North’s fifth nuclear test, conducted September 9. That raised concern overseas that it was moving closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the US mainland. In 2009, the U.S. Treasury designated the KKBC under an order targeting institutions that support North Korea’s arms trafficking and alleged that the bank was involved in supplying dual-use equipment to Pyongyang.
“A Dandong customs official, as well as other Dandong city officials who were charged with granting favors to Hongxiang’s Ma, are also being investigated in a group”, a Chinese source told the South Korean daily. Chinese leaders have resisted for fear of destabilizing Kim’s government and setting off a flood of refugees or a political collapse that might lead to USA and South Korean troops being stationed in the North near China’s border.
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But China has fully followed United Nations resolutions on North Korea, which put wide-ranging sanctions on the country, and fulfils its global obligations when it comes to non-proliferation export controls, Geng added.
