Anchor: The Wall Street Journal reported that several North Korean banks put on Washington’s sanction list are still allowed to access a crucial international financial network. This raised an alert over a substantial loophole in international cooperation on countering the rogue regime’s nuclear ambitions. Experts are calling for closer coordination among the countries in sanctioning the North.
Our Alannah Hill has more.
 
Report: The U.S. Treasury Department put North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank on its sanction list in 2013, accusing it of helping the North’s weapons of mass destruction programs.
 
Three other North Korean banks--Kumgang Bank, Koryo Credit Development Bank and North East Asia Bank--were added to the list in December as part of Washington’s individual sanction measures on the North.
 
However, according to the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, those four North Korean banks still remain on the international money-transfer messaging network, called the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication or SWIFT.
 
The WSJ said it raises questions about the efficiency of the international sanctions on the North and their loopholes.
 
Amid growing nuclear and missile threats posed by the North, Cory Gardner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs, has been calling on SWIFT to revoke all banking privileges for all North Korean institutions.
 
[Sound bite: Cory Gardner - Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs (English)]
“…the SWIFT financial network to continue their work to deny access to a number of designated individuals in North Korea, individual entities in North Korea that are both sanctioned. Those that are allowed to have access to SWIFT must end.”
 
SWIFT recently deactivated some other North Korean banks, such as Bank of East Land, Korea Daesong Bank and Korea Kwangson Banking Corporation., which all are subject to the international sanctions imposed under the UN Security Council resolutions.
 
Belgium-based SWIFT was established in 1977 by European and American banks, and its messaging system is used by more than eleven-thousand financial institutions in more than 200 countries.
 
SWIFT is closely cooperating with the European Union(EU), but is not required to abide by the U.S. sanctions.
 
However, experts are calling for closer international cooperation, including between the U.S. and the EU, in order to implement more thorough sanctions on the North to counter their nuclear and missile threats.
Alannah Hill, KBS World Radio News. 

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