The Treasury Department announced it sanctioned a North Korean company on Thursday that helped funnel money to the communist country’s weapons programs.
The Korea Sobaeksu Trading Company was sanctioned by the U.S. for its role in avoiding sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the United Nations. Additionally, the U.S. sanctioned the company for its “efforts to generate revenue clandestinely for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea government, including through fraudulent information technology worker schemes,” according to a press release from the Treasury Department. Three nationals from North Korea associated with the company and allegedly participating in the schemes were also sanctioned.
Korea Sobaeksu Trading Company engages in deceptive business practices. It is suspected of being a front company for North Korea’s “U.S.-designated” Munitions Industry Department, an integral part of the country’s weapons program. It oversees North Korea’s nuclear program while also assisting in the “development of ballistic missiles,” according to the Treasury Department.
“The Munitions Industry Department has previously utilized Sobaeksu to send teams of IT workers overseas, including to Vietnam, in order to generate revenue,” read the Treasury Department’s release. “Additionally, Sobaeksu has been involved in nuclear procurement activities on behalf of the Munitions Industry Department.”
The company is also linked to North Korea’s nefarious global clandestine IT worker operation scam, in which the country “dispatches teams of highly skilled IT workers around the world in order to generate revenue alongside other illicit trade activities, in violation of U.S. and U.N. sanctions.” To achieve their objectives, these workers “use fraudulent documents, stolen identities, and false personas to obfuscate their identities and infiltrate legitimate companies, including those in the United States and other allied jurisdictions,” noted the release.
North Korea’s government keeps the workers’ wages and spends them on developing the country’s weapons, notably ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, according to the Treasury Department.
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Bradley T. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department, warned of the dangers of the company’s deceptive practices in a statement about the newly imposed sanctions.
“The DPRK relies on front companies like Korea Sobaesku Trading Company and key facilitators to procure materials and generate revenue for the regime’s illegal nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” Smith said. “Our commitment is clear: Treasury, as part of a whole-of-government effort, will continue to hold accountable those who seek to infiltrate global supply chains and enable the sanctions evasion activities that further the Kim regime’s destabilizing agenda.”