JEJU ISLAND, South Korea, June 21 (UPI) -- The United Nations Security Council needs to impose new sanctions on North Korea to target its cybercrime activities, a former U.N. expert on Pyongyang said. But Russia's war in Ukraine and growing tensions between the United States and China are posing major obstacles.
"The biggest concern is no sanction. No new sanction and no new designation," Maiko Takeuchi, a former defense policy official with Japan's ministry of defense and a U.N. Security Council member of the Panel of Experts for North Korea from 2016 to 2021, said at a recent conference.
Nine U.N. resolutions sanctioning North Korea have been passed between 2006 and late 2017 to coerce the Kim Jong Un regime to denuclearize. But no new measure has been enacted since.
In May 2022, as North Korea was in the midst of launching a barrage of missile tests, the council failed for the first time to enact punitive measures against Pyongyang as China and Russia, who wield veto power, sided against the U.S.-led resolution.
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In February, a U.S.-led call for the Security Council to act on North Korea again failed due to China and Russia.
Takeuchi, board chair and chief executive office of Compliance and Capacity Skills International Asia Pacific, told UPI on the sidelines of the recent Jeju Forum for Peace and Prosperity that while China and Russia previously had the incentive to support sanctions on North Korea, now neither has reason to side with the United States, whom Beijing and Moscow are at deepening odds with.
Russia, she said, is sliding closer to North Korea amid the Kremlin's war in Ukraine as it is believed to be securing munitions from Pyongyang, and China, North Korea's most important ally and largest trading partner, is not going to side with the United States -- at least not without Washington making concessions.
"The North Korean issue can be one of the tools, items, to be used as a deal," she said. "Even if they have the room to agree on the North Korean issue, they don't want to."
She added that amid the Kremlin's war in Ukraine, Pyongyang is actively trying to increase its importance to Russia, knowing that President Vladimir Putin is seeking to shore up any support he can.
Concerning China, though it is not arming Russia in its war, it is strengthening its relationship with Moscow.
"But still," Takeuchi said, "Before supporting U.S. or supporting Russia, which one do you take?"
While some argue that the sanctions currently in place need to be better enforced, Takeuchi agrees that full enforcement would have a large effect on North Korea. But the current measures do not target Pyongyang's malicious cyberactivities, which have been a growing and prevalent source funding for the Kim regime's nuclear and weapons programs.
According to a February report from Chainalysis, a New York City-based blockchain analysis firm, North Korean hackers stole $3.8 billion in 2022 from cryptocurrency businesses, which represents a slight increase from $3.3 billion a year prior but a massive jump from $500 million in 2020.
For comparison, the North's gross domestic product for 2021 was $28 billion, according to Seoul.
Joseph Byrne, a research fellow at the London-based think tank Royal United Services Institute who spoke alongside Takeuchi during a panel on North Korea sanctions at the Jeju Forum, explained that North Korea works with criminal organizations to evade sanctions, and they use their established networks to aid Pyongyang in generating new revenue sources -- including through laundering cryptocurrencies.
During his talk, he referred to recent U.S. Department of Justice indictments that accuse North Koreans of utilizing over-the-counter cryptocurrency traders who use stolen funds to buy goods that are then sent to North Korea.
"The money is generated outside of North Korea, it is spent outside of North Korea and the goods are procured outside of North Korea," he said.
"Lots of this activity has not been sanctioned and has not been designated at the U.N. level."
Takeuchi explained that North Korea's malicious cyberactivities only violate sanctions when they are used to infringe upon designations that are in place, which, due to the anonymity possible via the Internet, is difficult to prove.
"If it's used to steal [weapons of mass destruction] technology from England, this is a violation of sanctions because of the purpose. However, if they just steal money from my [digital] wallet, call NYPD," she said. "That's the difference."
It is not known how many people have been targeted by the North's cyberintrusions, but Takeuchi believes it's a lot.
She pointed to the 2017 WannaCry global ransomware attack that affected hundreds of thousands of computers in 150 countries as evidence of its size.
"It is only the tip of the iceberg," she said.
North Korean hackers are not only seeking ways to infiltrate people's wallets but are also after their information, she said, adding that they try to gain access to accounts that have connections to targets who they intend to either steal information from or blackmail.
She said they also target unsuspecting companies, such as bakeries, because their clientele may be the receptionist of a pharmaceutical company the hackers are seeking to infiltrate, for instance.
Takeuchi is concerned that North Korean hackers may be turning to stealing the personal information of a target to masquerade as them online.
With remote work exploding due to the COVID-19 pandemic, these hackers could use their filched information to obtain employment anywhere in the world as a freelancer.
Though hypothetical, Takeuchi said this aligns with North Korea's modus operandi.
Japan has identified 17 of its citizens abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, with another 873 cases of missing persons suspected to have been taken by Pyongyang.
Among those confirmed by Tokyo is the case of 43-year-old Osaka noodle shop employee Tadaaki Hara. Hara was abducted in June 1980, and North Korean agent Shin Kwang Soo took his place.
While impersonating Hara, Shin acquired a Japanese passport, which he used to travel abroad and establish North Korean bases to target South Korea from.
According to Japan, North Korea has since admitted to abducting Hara, who Pyongyang says died of cirrhosis.
Hackers, Takeuchi postulates, can conduct a similar abduction, but virtually and with the victim never being the wiser.
"I could easily imagine they could do the same thing with cyber," she said. "And it is easier."
