경제 봉쇄정책 뚫고, 모래팔아서 떼돈버는 북한, 맞아 모래팔아서 떼돈벌어서, 해주지역이 바다로 변하면 어떻게 되는거지? 돈벌기위한 방법은 다동원하는데....머리가 참 좋긴하지만, 유엔경제봉쇄정책을 피해가면서....
중국은 살판났네. 북에서 퍼가는 모래는 국제시세보다 절반가격도 안될것이기에. 수백척의 모래화물선이 줄지어 대기하는 해주항의 모습이 나의 눈에는, quarry가 많이 생겨, 어린아이들 여름철에 멱감다가 익사될 확률이 높을것 같은 걱정이다. 같은 동족으로 이러한 잘못된 돈벌이는, 좀더 강력한 봉쇄정책으로 막아야 금수강산 지키는길이다.
경제봉쇄정책으로 수출입길이 완전히 막힌 김정은 Regime은 이제 항구에서 준설한다는 핑계를 대고, 모래를 퍼서 팔아 수천만 달러의 외화를 불법벌어들여, 핵무기개발및 탄도미사일 개발에 투자하고, 주민들은 여전히 굶주림에 허기진배를 쥐어 짜면서 노력동원에 투입한다.
지난해 5월에 Luca Kuo와 Lauren Sung, 이들 두사람은 전에 보지못했던 이상한 광경을 봤다. 즉 100척이 넘는 화물선들이 북한의 해주항에 모여있는것을 목격했던 것이다.
이들 두사람은 와싱턴에 있는 근무처에서, 빅데이타를 이용하여 안전문제를 조사하고 분석하는,비영리단체인, C4ADS에서 연구원으로 근무하는데, 이들이 북동아시아 바다와 북한 해안에서 배들이 들락날락하는것을 눈여겨 봤었다.
그들이 이렇게 눈여겨 조사한이유는 평양의 김정은 Regime은 석탄과 값나가는 물건들을 몰래 판매하는것을 비난받아왔었기에, 북한에 적용하는 봉쇄정책을 원칙데로 적용시키는 법집행이 잘이행되는가를, 점검하기위해 해상에서 통관원이 경계의 눈초리로 감시해왔었던 것이다. 장사를 하기전에 물건들을 옮기는 대신에, 북한인들은 해상에서 물건들을 선박에서 다른선박으로 옮기고 원선적지에 대해서는 거짖말을 한것이다. 배에서 배로 물건옮기는 행위로 수천만 달러를 벌어들여, 어떤 물건을 팔았느냐에 따라 달라질수 있긴 했지만, 현찰을 긁어 모으기에 혈안인 김정은에 자랑스럽게 바칠수 있었다.
김정은과 그찌라시들의 욕심을 채우기위해 2천 5백만 주민들은 필요시 사용하고 버리는 소모품정도로 취급받고 있기에, Quarry에서 어린아이들 몇명 익사하는것은, 서방세계의 시민들이 더운 여름철에 귀찮케 하는 Fly들을 Swatter로 탁 조준하여 죽이듯이, 가벼운 하나의 장난감 놀이기구 정도로 여겨질 뿐이다.
현대의 건축술에서는 모래가 가장 중요한 자재중의 하나다. 그뿐만이 아니고 유리를 만드는 재료, 요즘 컴퓨터 없이는 세상돌아가는것을 알수없드시, 컴퓨터 제조에 절대적으로 필요한 부품의 재료로 사용되고 있다. 우리 지구촌 사람들이 일년에 소모하는 모래는 대략 500만톤쯤 된다(50 billion tonnes of sand per year). 이렇게 많은 양의 소모는 우리가 매일 마시고 세탁하는데 사용하는 물 다음으로 많이 소모되는 지하자원이다. 중국은 Little Man 얼간이 김정은에 외화 몇푼 건네주고, 해주시내를 Quarry촌으로 만드는 것이다.
이렇게 엄첨난 양의 모래를 지구촌 이곳에서 저곳으로 퍼나르는 과정에서 지구환경에 미치는 영향은 전문가들의 분석에 따르면 Air Pollution이상으로 큰 재앙이라고 한다. 걱정이다.
Air Pollution과 핵폭탄제조로, 옛날 체르노빌에서 원폭피해를 입었을때, 전유럽과 지구촌이 혼비백산하면서 전전긍긍하던 그때가 기억난다. 어쨋던 한반도에서는 걱정이 끝날날이 없다. 한반도의 현실정이다.
2010년대에 세계 역사상 유래없는 건설붐이 일어났었다. 중국에서 2011년부터 2013년 사이에 사용한 양이 20세기 동안에 미국이 사용했던 양보다 더 많은 콩크리트을 사용했었다. 요즘에는 빌딩붐은 한창 건설붐이 피크였을때에 비해 비록 수그러들기는 했지만, 아직도 중국의 콩크리트 사용량은 전세계가 사용한 양보다 훨씬 더 많이 사용하고 있다( than the rest of the world combined.)
앞으로도 지금까지 살아온 한민족의 5천년 세월보다 더긴세월을 후손들이 살아가야할 강산을 마치 영원한 주인이 된것처럼 착각하고, 맘데로 파헤치고 부시고 훼손하는 악마짖을 하면서, 8천만 우리민족을 개돼지 취급하면서 끌고다니고, 위협하고, 공갈에 떨게하는 광란짖에, 이를 못하게 막고 귀싸대기 후려치고 저지하는 의인한명없고, "원균"같은 모리배들만 우글거리는, 특히 한반도의 잘개발된 남쪽에서 인생 enjoy하는 자들의 조국사랑하는 애국심보다는, 내일을 생각못하고 현재의 삶에 푹빠져 세월죽이는 한심한 광경에 치가 떨리고, 이를 부추기고, 아부는 할줄 알아도 따끔한 훈계한마디 못하고 주변의 가족들에게만 방안퉁수짖 해대고 괴롭히는 그위인이 더욱 밉다.
Hong Kong (CNN Business)It
was May of last year when Lucas Kuo and Lauren Sung noticed something
strange: more than 100 ships gathering in the waters near Haeju, North
Korea.
As part of
their work at the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies
(C4ADS), a nonprofit that analyzes and investigates security issues
using big data, the two analysts keep an eye on traffic in North Korean
waters and further afield in Northeast Asia.
They
do this because Pyongyang has been accused of selling coal and other
valuable goods, sometimes in very big quantities, on the high seas to
get around the prying eyes of customs officers, who must enforce United
Nations sanctions on North Korea. Instead of moving goods into a port
before trading, North Koreans supposedly just move them from one ship to another at sea and lie about their origins.
These
"ship-to-ship transfers" can rake in tens of millions of dollars for
Kim Jong Un's cash-strapped regime, depending on what's sold.
They are meant to be fast and discreet,
and usually involve a few ships at most. But Sung and Kuo kept seeing
dozens of ships mysteriously sailing to North Korea.
Something was up.
What
Kuo and Sung went on to discover was a massive operation allegedly
worth millions of dollars involving 279 ships which appeared to be
skirting international sanctions on North Korea.
But these ships weren't being used for running guns, dealing drugs, offloading counterfeit cash or trafficking endangered species, crimes North Korea is notorious for worldwide. They weren't even carrying coal, Pyongyang's most profitable export.
They were being used to
dredge and transport sand. That may seem innocuous, but North Korea is
barred from exporting earth and stone under United Nations sanctions
passed in December 2017. Trading North Korean sand is a violation of
international law.
Despite those
measures, North Korea raked in at least $22 million last year using "a
substantial sand-export operation," UN investigators said in a report
released in April. One unnamed country supplied the Panel of Experts on
North Korea, as the investigators are formally known, with intelligence
claiming that Pyongyang sent one million tons of sand abroad from May
2019 until the end of the year.
The
scheme was prominently featured in the panel's annual report. Alastair
Morgan, who coordinates the UN panel that monitors sanctions on North
Korea, said in an email that the report's authors decided "the large
scale and the significance" of the operation warranted top billing.
The
UN report didn't cite C4ADS' data. Morgan said his team submitted their
draft in February, before Kuo and Sung published their research in
March.
Piecing together the clues
Kuo
and Sung watched the ships for several weeks before noticing a pattern.
All of those showing up in North Korean waters had a link to China.
Some were flying Chinese flags. Others had Chinese names.
Ship-to-ship
transfers usually involve vessels registered to small countries where
regulation is cheap and oversight is lax — boats flying a so-called flag of convenience.
But
maybe these weren't ship-to-ship transfers, the pair thought. They
realized they needed more information before they could come to any
conclusions.
So they turned to
satellite imagery, perhaps the most important tool among the growing
open-source intelligence community. The photographs they got their hands
on showed clouds of sand under what appear to be dozens of barges and
dredgers, evidence that earth was being pulled up from the bottom of the
sea en masse in North Korean waters.
Sung did some research into North Korea's history of sand sales and dredging, and everything quickly clicked.
"We
found plenty of reports from the early 90s to the present indicating
that rather than this kind of being anything new, North Korea has always
been exporting sand to a lot of its neighboring countries," Sung said.
Sung said it now appeared "there was a conscious effort to do this under the radar."
This handout image courtesy of C4ADS shows ships in the waters off the coast of the North Korean city of Haeju.
The importance of sand
Modern
civilization is built on different types of sand. It's a key ingredient
in concrete, glass and even the processors that power the electronic
device you're reading this on. Humanity consumes about 50 billion tonnes of sand per year — more than any other natural resource on the planet except for water.
Its
supply may seem limitless, but there's only so much of it to be dug up
and removing it from the earth can have environmental consequences.
The
sand that blankets the world's deserts is too fine to use in
construction because it doesn't bind well. River sand is typically the
best for making cement. Sand from the bottom of the ocean works too, but
it needs to be washed and desalinated before it can be used.
Pyongyang
has seemingly cashed in on the sand trade for years. Years ago, when
North and South Korea did significant business together, sand was
Pyongyang's most valuable export to its southern neighbor, according to media reports at the time. North Korea sold $73.35 million worth of sand to the Republic of Korea in 2008, though South Korea stopped buying North Korean sand shortly after.
But there's an even more important customer bordering North Korea: China, the world's most voracious consumer of sand.
During
the 2010s, the country underwent a construction boom unprecedented in
world history — Beijing used more concrete in 2011 through 2013 than the
United States did in the entire 20th century. Though the building boom
has slowed today compared to its peak, China still uses more concrete than the rest of the world combined.
This handout image courtesy of C4ADS shows ships in the waters off the coast of the North Korean city of Haeju."
What was going on?
Neither
Sung or Kuo knows what happened to the million tons of sand after it
was shipped to various Chinese ports across the country's coast. Sand
smuggling is a major issue in China and the trade is notoriously opaque.
China's Ministry of Public
Security, which did not respond to CNN's request for comment for this
story, launched a campaign at the start of last year to crack down on
illegal sand operations along the Yangtze River. By October, authorities
had investigated 90 groups in 10 different provinces and seized $251
million, 305 sand mining vessels and 2.88 million cubic meters of sand, Chinese state media reported.
Beijing
so far has denied allegations of any wrongdoing when it comes to the
North Korean operation. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a
statement to CNN that the country "has always fulfilled its
international obligations" and abides by UN sanctions.
In
the UN report, China responded to the allegations by saying the country
"attached great importance to the clues provided by the panel in
relation to the smuggling of sand" but that authorities in the country
were "unable to confirm that the sand had been transported to Chinese
ports."
North Korea has not
publicly responded to these specific allegations, but often refers to
the sanctions as "hostile acts" and questions their legitimacy.
It's also still unclear who was digging up the sand and why they were doing it.
The
who question is the more difficult one to determine. None of the 279 of
the ships involved in the scheme that C4ADS identified had an IMO
number — a unique identifier that's tied to a tracking device on board.
Ships caught without them or obscuring them are often stripped of their
registration in their home countries, which makes it almost impossible
to enter a port. But without IMO numbers, it's hard to tie these vessels
to particular companies or people.
The why question has a few possible answers.
It's
possible North Korea sold the dredging rights to a Chinese company,
Sung and Kuo said. Sand isn't particularly difficult to mine, but it's a
logistical nightmare. The cost of washing ocean sand, storing it and
transporting such a heavy product quickly adds up.
"Unless you're really working at scale, it's not something that's particularly profitable," Sung said.
But
there's another possibility: that Pyongyang was less interested in the
sand itself and instead wanted to deepen or expand Haeju port. North
Korea could have contracted a company with a fleet of ships based in
China to do the dredging and let them keep the sand as payment.
Whatever
the purpose, it's up to individual countries to uphold UN sanctions —
the international body doesn't have an enforcement arm.
Kuo
said he's still surprised the operation stayed under wraps for so long,
despite the fact that so many ships — and possibly people — were
involved.
"This is one of the most unique cases of North Korean sanctions evasion behavior that we've seen," Kuo said.
"We are still perplexed."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/business/north-korea-sand-intl-hnk/index.html
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