On April 6th, a Canadian military aircraft was sent to Japan to aid in the prevention of North Korea’s banned maritime activities under United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions. The aircraft, known as the CP-140 Aurora, will be monitoring and suspected evasion activities for six weeks, focusing on ship-to-ship transfers of prohibited commodities. This aircraft is equipped with advanced sensors and consists of 40 personnel. In addition to the CP-140 Aurora, Canada also dispatched the HMCS Montreal, a Halifax-class frigate, and the CH-148 cyclone helicopter to assist with the monitoring mission as part of their ongoing naval forward presence operation in the Indo-Pacific. Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand declared Japan as one of Canada’s most critical defense partners in the region and stressed the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Since 2006, the UN has implemented a series of sanctions on North Korea due to their nuclear and ballistic missile testing. North Korea has continued to evade these sanctions through elaborate and clandestine ship-to-ship transfers and black-market networks across the region. According to a 2020 UNSC report, North Korea had initiated a substantial sand export operation to China, involving over 100 illicit shipments of sand, worth at least $22 million. The report also revealed that North Korea’s coal exports had increased despite the international ban, with at least 2.8 million tons of coal being transferred from North Korea to China’s local barges via ship-to-ship transfers. In 2019, 3.7 million tons of coal were exported, estimated to be worth $370 million. A London-based think tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), analyzed satellite photos and ships’ automatic identification system (AIS) and concluded that North Korean vessels were not being stopped or detained, even when transmitting fraudulent AIS signals to disguise themselves.