The Arsenal of Autocracy

North Korea’s leadership thrives in moments of global upheaval. And as wars rage in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, Pyongyang has seized its opportunity to spread death and destruction through arms sales. Although the Kim regime has been systematically isolated from the international community, regularly denies that it is supplying weapons overseas, and is prohibited by UN Security Council resolutions from buying or selling various arms, it has nonetheless become a de facto arsenal for the United States’ adversaries.

Pyongyang’s weapons are everywhere. Its shells are fueling Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine, with over a thousand containers of military aid arriving since September 2023. North Korean rocket-propelled grenades were likely fired by Hamas in their October 7 assault against Israel. North Korean multiple-rocket launchers, AGP-250 glide bombs, and 122-millimeter guided rockets have even been reported in the hands of a Sudanese paramilitary group.

The Kim regime stands to benefit tremendously—financially, strategically, and technologically—from resurgent arms trade relationships. Urgent action is needed to stop this trade and its destabilizing effects. To fight it, the United States must mobilize a coalition to increase international awareness of the scale of the problem, and strengthen detection, oversight, and sanctions compliance. If these steps are not taken, then North Korea will be able to finance further weapons testing and development, gain access to dangerous new technologies, launder its ill-gotten profits, and spread mayhem and destruction.

A NEW NATION

The conventional wisdom in Seoul and Washington is that North Korea is isolated and cash-strapped, and so both governments typically interpret news from the secretive country in the light of their assumption that it is a weak, second-tier threat. Such optimism, however, is unwarranted. Although North Korea’s population may be isolated from the free flow of information and trade, and the Kim regime a global pariah, Pyongyang’s links to authoritarian regimes are powerful and growing stronger. North Korea now counts China, Iran, Russia, and Syria among its friends and partners. Beijing and Moscow have, in particular, gone from grudging participants in Western attempts to pressure Pyongyang into curbing its illicit weapons programs to openly supporting the Kim regime. Putin has received missiles from North Korea and even gone so far as to publicly discuss sharing weapons technology with Pyongyang, both of which are prohibited by UN Security Council Resolutions that Russia voted for.

North Korea is no longer a country seeking sanctions relief or one hungry for improved relations with the United States. Instead, it now confidently forecasts the gradual decline of U.S. power and the resurgence of challengers, including Russia. To that end, Pyongyang is trying to engage an authoritarian network to weaken Washington’s position. As North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui warned in October 2023, “If peace and security in the region are endangered due to the persistent moves of the United States, Japan and South Korea for instability, [North Korea and Russia] will act as a powerful strategic stability element to contain such [a] situation.”

Arms sales are central to this strategy. Pyongyang has long sold weapons to adversaries of the United States, its friends, and its allies. For example, North Korea has championed violence against Israel since at least the early 1970s because of its identity, in the regime’s words, as an “imperialist satellite state.” Former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung welcomed Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to Pyongyang in 1984 and provided a steady stream of weapons to the PLO. Both of Kim’s successors have continued his policy. Since 2014, for example, North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un has reportedly been sending rockets to Hamas.

ARMS ACROSS THE WATER

North Korea derives multiple benefits from its arms sales. First, and perhaps foremost, they generate valuable income. With little to offer for legitimate trade, North Korea’s illicit weapons dealing is a rare opportunity to acquire hard currency, which it can then use to fund its own weapons programs. The arms trade also allows the regime to build relationships with trading partners and to gain access to restricted technologies. In exchange for North Korean weapons, for example, Moscow may be supporting Pyongyang’s space and missile programs. Part of the recent summit between Putin and Kim took place at a Russian spaceport, where Putin hinted at North Korean–Russian military cooperation, saying that Kim showed a “big interest in rocket technologies.” The U.S. government assesses that North Korea is seeking fighter aircraft, surface-to-air missiles, and armored vehicles, as well as ballistic missile production equipment from Russia in exchange for arms. Moscow could also help North Korea develop the technology to launch missiles with multiple warheads to overwhelm U.S. and allied missile defenses. Moscow has been helping Pyongyang in other areas, and this month, The New York Times reported that a Russian bank has unfrozen $9 million of North Korean assets for the purchase of crude oil. North Korea has also been permitted to open a bank account at a Russian financial institution, thereby facilitating the country’s return to the global financial system, which had been restricted by UN sanctions.

Weapons sales also serve the Kim regime’s strategic goals by fueling confrontations and conflicts that chip away at international order and challenge the United States and its allies. North Korea’s arms exports, for example, help prop up the new authoritarian axis, which emerged following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The most important part of this axis is the Chinese-Russian relationship, which Beijing and Moscow claim has “no limits” and which has led China to supply Russia just about everything it needs to sustain its war, short of lethal aid. But North Korea has also been an essential contributor, sending over a million artillery shells to Moscow, according to South Korean and Ukrainian officials, thereby helping the Russian military sustain its operations.

North Korean support for Russia’s war against Ukraine has caused Kim’s stock to rise in Moscow. A recent surge of intense diplomacy with the Kremlin, capped by a leader-level summit with Putin, has allowed Kim to hedge against his overdependence on Beijing. In a letter to Putin last year, Kim described the North Korean–Russia relationship in terms usually reserved for his country’s ties with China. Although both Pyongyang and Moscow have publicly denied any arms deals, Kim offered his “full and unconditional” support for the Kremlin during a six-day trip to Russia last summer. One month later, the White House released satellite imagery showing a sea and rail link that is being used to deliver North Korean artillery and missiles to Russia. To fulfill future orders, North Korea has been running its factories at full capacity, according to a South Korean official. It is producing short-range ballistic missiles and tank ammunition for Russia, and may also be sending multiple rocket launchers, antitank and antiaircraft missiles, and field artillery.

SMASHING THE NETWORK

So far, the importance of the rapidly worsening problem posed by North Korea’s growing relationships with other authoritarian regimes is underappreciated in Washington. Discussion about North Korea by U.S. commentators on North Korea policy—the authors included—almost invariably focuses on ways to meet the direct challenge to deterrence posed by Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal, rather than the indirect threat caused by other types of proliferation or by the network that North Korea is building. Some prominent North Korea experts have even been debating whether or not Pyongyang has made the strategic decision to go to war. But preparing to deter and defeat aggression cannot come at the expense of dealing with the real and present threat posed by North Korean proliferation. A new strategy is needed to deal with this worsening problem; past policies will not be sufficient to reverse these worrying trends.

Creating such a strategy will not be easy. Washington’s primary tool for countering Pyongyang is sanctions, and North Korea’s sanctions-evasion techniques are well honed, are sophisticated, and often involve tremendous effort and ingenuity. Using front and shell companies, foreign partners, and diplomatic cover, as well as by false flagging vessels and changing ship ownership on registrations, North Korea has disguised many illicit transactions as innocent ones—or hidden them entirely. And now that China and Russia are increasingly willing to partner with North Korea directly, it has become far simpler for Pyongyang to conduct its illicit activities and engage in sanctions-violating transactions.

But that does not mean the situation is hopeless. Where the political will to combat North Korean proliferation is lacking—as is the case in Beijing and Moscow—it is vital for the United States and its allies to highlight these violations. They should do so by condemning the purchasers of North Korean arms and calling on them to abide by unanimously adopted UN resolutions prohibiting such transactions. Although this is unlikely to cause Moscow to change course, Western condemnation could nonetheless impose reputational costs on Russia and China that can be reversed only by returning to compliance, serving as a warning to other countries. At the same time, the United States must continue to mobilize friends and allies including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and the United Kingdom to conduct joint maritime patrols to monitor for illicit North Korean transactions.

North Korea’s sanctions-evasion techniques are well honed, are sophisticated, and involve tremendous effort and ingenuity.

This effort is already beginning. In January, Japan, South Korea, and the United States conducted large-scale combined naval exercises to deter North Korean aggression, and they practiced responding to nuclear, missile, and underwater threats. The navies also conducted joint drills on “advanced maritime communication operations, maritime interdiction operations training, air combat drills, staff exchanges and integration,” according to the U.S. Navy. This was a good start, but because North Korea’s networks are global, the U.S.-led effort needs more partners and a greater reach. Its coalition of nations must also partner with private-sector and nonprofit groups to map out North Korean proliferation networks and associates.

Training and support will be vital to this effort. The United States and its partners already fund and provide training programs to educate governments about the risks of North Korean proliferation. They have also devised techniques for effective screening and detection. But 90 percent of low-income countries and 50 percent of middle-income countries were found to be noncompliant or only partially compliant with a Financial Action Task Force recommendation for implementing sanctions related to all weapons of mass destruction. In part, this seems to stem from the complexities of compliance, and organizations including Compliance and Capacity Skills International and the Royal United Services Institute have created resources and training to increase understanding. Their training workshops have helped countries identify sanctions evaders by adopting a more nuanced approach that goes beyond merely looking at screening lists. More funding will be vital to increasing these programs’ effectiveness.

But screening will not be enough. Pyongyang uses intermediaries and false flags to disguise its vessels. And lax enforcement and reporting practices at transport hubs help North Korea’s advanced sanctions-evasion techniques. Less than five percent of the individuals and entities mentioned in UN Panel of Experts reports are officially designated by UN sanctions, according to an investigation by the Royal United Services Institute. That is partially because UN sanctions on North Korea have not been updated since 2018 because of Chinese and Russian opposition. In addition, North Korea is increasingly conducting its illicit activities online, and it has been able to steal more than $3 billion through crypto heists. Action is needed at the government-to-government level to improve enforcement, along with expanded engagement with private-sector entities that may not even realize that they are participating in North Korean projects.

To generate the necessary political momentum for change, Washington and its allies should seek to focus global attention on North Korea’s illicit activities and on its partners. This should be done by condemning Pyongyang’s activities in as specific terms as possible in major multilateral and bilateral statements—as was done in the G-7 Foreign Ministers Joint Statement in November 2023, which called on “UN Member States to fully and effectively implement all relevant [UN Security Council Resolutions]” and “strongly condemn[ed] arms transfers from North Korea to Russia”—and by increasing cooperation with other like-minded countries. Japan and South Korea both having seats in the UN Security Council in 2024 provides a good opportunity to shine light on this topic. More global attention will help raise the issue’s profile and encourage countries to cooperate on counterproliferation. Those that refuse will run the risk of ostracization—and although Beijing and Moscow may not be afraid of the costs of being uncooperative, smaller countries and companies may be.

THE COST OF INACTION

Thus far, Washington has been reluctant to enact and enforce unilateral secondary sanctions on certain entities engaged in business relationships that lead back to North Korea, choosing instead to designate individuals and entities in limited, occasional cases. Although the UN Panel of Experts has identified Asia as the number one location for North Korean sanctions evasion, with China the center of evasion activities, Washington appears reluctant to designate Chinese entities for fear that doing so could have wide-ranging consequences for U.S.-Chinese relations. At a time when Washington’s attention is focused on events in Europe and the Middle East, it is also natural to wonder whether the United States has the bandwidth to combat Pyongyang’s global proliferation activities as a priority.

Yet these concerns must be weighed against the near certainty of increased risks if North Korea’s behavior goes unchecked. The extent of global problems is such that it may be natural to see North Korea as a secondary problem that is not on the scale of Russian aggression, violence in the Middle East, or China’s threats to Taiwan. But this is a shortsighted approach—one that neglects to consider that the problems North Korea poses to U.S. interests and the global order are directly connected to these other challenges. The scale of the threat demands that Washington be less sensitive about imposing sanctions on entities that do business in or with Iran, Russia, and other North Korean partners. Washington unilaterally sanctioned Russian banks in 2018 for facilitating North Korean financial activity related to weapons of mass destruction. With fresh evidence of the North Korean arms trade emerging, the U.S. Treasury must take further action, and partners and allies should do the same.

Pyongyang’s integration into an emerging authoritarian axis has empowered it to expand its proliferation, procurement, and provocations while also strengthening the international order’s other adversaries. Developing and executing a reinvigorated international strategy to counter North Korean proliferation would not be a distraction from defeating Russia, stabilizing the Middle East, or even deterring Chinese aggression. Rather, it is vital to making progress on these goals.