North's port activity jumps fivefold since 2019, suggesting illegal coal trade: Report

Commercial vessel activity at North Korea's ports has surged fivefold since 2019, a report said on Tuesday, raising fresh suspicions of illegal coal trading.

The report, co-published by the Seoul-based Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights and the British research group Data Desk, tracked vessels longer than 80 meters (262.5 feet) at North Korea's five major ports: Nampho, Chongjin, Wonsan, Rason and Kimchaek. Recorded activity climbed to 3,756 cases last year, up from 783 in 2019.

Nampho, North Korea's largest coal export hub, saw the sharpest rise with more than 3,000 cases last year, up from 554 in 2019.

The findings were based on satellite imagery of the ports combined with automatic identification system (AIS) data, or the digital location signals sent by ships.

One key detail in the report is that only between 14 and 33 percent of vessels visible in satellite photos appeared in AIS records — a gap the report says points to ships deliberately going dark to evade detection.

North Korea's coal exports have been banned outright since the United Nations passed Resolution 2371 in 2017. The ban, however, has not stopped the trade, the report claimed.

The surge has been especially pronounced among vessels already under UN sanctions, with cases involving such ships reaching 91 last year, the highest in 11 years, according to the report.

It traced this spike to the collapse of UN oversight in 2024, when Russia vetoed the renewal of the Security Council panel monitoring North Korea's sanctions violations. The report also attributed this widening loophole to deepening cooperation among Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow.

It flags a telling signal as well: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's call to modernize the coal industry suggests that Pyongyang sees real room to expand it.

At a key party meeting last week, North Korea named coal as a strategic pillar of the economy, calling for a nationwide overhaul of the sector and its mining communities.

At the meeting, Kim described ending the industry's "centuries-old backwardness" as a matter of "weighty significance."

Yonhap