Pyongyang proliferation

As tensions over North Korea's sinking of the South Korean Navy warship Cheonan continue to rise, the leaking of the UN report claiming Pyongyang was exporting nuclear and missile technology to Iran, Syria and Burma was expected to further undermine the precarious peace on the Korean Peninsula and add to international concern over proliferation.

The 47-page document accused the communist regime in North Korea of circumventing United Nations sanctions by using a complicated network of front companies, middlemen and overseas criminal groups to export nuclear and missile technology.

The UN report comes just over a week after the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in New York adopted a declaration upholding principles of nuclear disarmament which also included a specific call on North Korea to return to negotiations to settle the dispute over its nuclear activities.

According to US experts, North Korea has enough plutonium for six to eight nuclear weapons and is suspected of seeking to enrich uranium as an alternative ingredient for its bombs. Test blasts in North Korea were detected in 2006 and 2009, confirming Western fears that the communist regime had achieved a nuclear capability.

Although security analysts believe North Korea still lacks the technology to place a nuclear weapon on a missile, Pyongyang conducted a series of cruise and Scud-type ballistic missile tests in the Sea of Japan last year which experts believe were part of its pursuit of a warhead delivery system.

"The likelihood that North Korea is exporting missile and nuclear technology simply shows that North Korea is more advanced than other aspirants and as a result is trying to develop niche markets," Scott Snyder, a senior fellow for Korea Studies at the Council for Foreign Relations in Washington, told Deutsche Welle.

"In the missile area, North Korea has utilized this advantage for over two decades, based on technology from Russia incorporated into its systems through reverse engineering. North Korea's missiles capabilities have reportedly been of use in the development of both Pakistani and Iranian mid- to long-range missiles."

Nuclear ambitions now include exporting technology

The leaked report states that, while the UN sanctions were working to a certain extent, North Korea had developed smuggling channels using companies and individuals who operate outside the UN's asset freezes and travel bans.

Pyongyang was using "multiple layers of intermediaries, shell companies and financial institutions" and had used "a number of masking techniques," including the use of misleading source and delivery information on export cargo as well as falsifying content details on shipping containers to get around sanctions.

The communist regime was also accused of employing international crime syndicates to assist in the transportation and distribution of "illicit and smuggled cargoes," possibly including parts for weapons of mass destruction smuggled in kit form.

With UN sanctions biting and international pressure adding to North Korea's isolation, some experts see its proliferation activities as a way to generate much-needed revenue.

"North Korea has long pursued this trade as a means by which to earn foreign exchange," said Scott Snyder. "It is arguable that existing sanctions, by limiting North Korean options, might actually push North Korea further into trade in illegal items."

"There are strategic advantages that may accrue from this trade, but it is mainly being driven by the opportunity to develop a broader and deeper customer network for which North Korea is virtually a sole supplier."

Read more on North Korea's nuclear drive

Supplying of rogue states raises international stakes

The revelation that North Korea has been proliferating nuclear technology comes as the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), convenes in Vienna for a week-long meeting to discuss Iran and Syria's nuclear ambitions.

Both programs are causing concern, especially Iran's as it was revealed in the IAEA's latest report that Tehran is pressing ahead with its uranium enrichment activities - despite three existing rounds of UN sanctions - and is now producing enriched uranium at even higher levels of purification, a requisite for achieving weapons-grade material.

Dr. Kongdan Oh, an Asia specialist at the Brookings Institute in Washington, believes that North Korea's dealings with Iran, Syria and Burma come with many advantages for Pyongyang.

"Iran can offer lots of things to North Korea from food to other resources; North Korea can gain high respect in the troubled world and build its own support network from befriending Syria," she told Deutsche Welle.

"After all, sometimes things are decided at the UN, and North Korea needs friends. Burma provides a golden route of trading, mineral resources, and friendship. North Korea thinks that it is a big player in the international arena, so gaining new friends is important."

"In the short term, North Korea may gain some strategic advantage through these alliances," she added. "At UN meetings which require global endorsement, such as potential, comprehensive sanctions in response to the Cheonan sinking incident, these countries can stand behind North Korea."

"In the long term, however, North Korea will lose. All advanced and developed - as well as rational - players in the global community will recognize the end of the North Korea regime is the ultimate solution to all these troubles."

Pyongyang's links with Burma stoke fears

In the present situation, North Korea's supplying of Burma with technology is as disturbing as the potential consequences of aiding Iran or Syria.

What will be most concerning to Western powers is the combination of the UN's assertion that Pyongyang and Naypyidaw have been colluding to bypass arms control sanctions with leaked reports from Burma itself which suggests the military junta is pursuing a nuclear weapons and long-range missiles program.

While the Burmese Government is considered to be some way from creating usable nuclear weapons, information smuggled out of the repressed Asian state suggests Burma has at least one nuclear reactor capable of turning uranium compounds into uranium metal for use either in nuclear fuel or a nuclear bomb and has future plans to construct a nuclear reactor to make weapons-grade plutonium.

Burma's link to North Korea was established by Western intelligence agencies last year when photographs and documents smuggled out of the country revealed that the junta had held secret high-level military talks with officials from Pyongyang.

UN faces challenge to bring North Korea to book

"The only option is to try to plug the holes that are being exploited by North Korea," Scott Snyder said. "The significance of the report lies in identifying those holes as a basis upon which implementation of the United Nations Security Council resolution might be made more effective."

"Nuclear proliferation is a tough area and the UN has already failed in the larger sense when you consider that India and Pakistan proliferated, Israel slipped under the radar and now North Korea, Iran and others are following the path of previous proliferators," Kongdan Oh said.

"What needs to be done is for the Proliferation Security Initiative, installed by the US after 9/11, to be institutionalized and accepted as a means to prevent nuclear exports and smuggling," she added.

"Then a global network of concerned nations and leaders should create a foundation to work together to create a working body to monitor proliferating countries and rogue states. A longer-term perspective and institution building is key, not one-shot reaction after each crisis."

Author: Nick Amies

Editor: Rob Mudge