North Korea to South Korea as ‘hostile nation’, UN withdrawal, new North Korea sanctions MSMT as international law transition

North Korea to South Korea as ‘hostile nation’, UN withdrawal, new North Korea sanctions MSMT as international law transition

North Korea announced the ‘hostile nation constitutional provision’ to South Korea, and South Korea, the US, and Japan transitioned to the Multinational Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) outside the UN Security Council system, and the competition to apply international law first has begun.
On the 17th, North Korea reported on South Korea’s ‘hostile nation’ constitutional revision through state-run media, and the South Korea, US, and Japan’s trilateral foreign ministers’ meeting announced on the 16th the launch of a new Multinational Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) to replace the UN North Korea Sanctions Expert Panel.

On the 16th, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim Hong-gyun, and Japanese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Masataka Okano announced the official launch of the ‘Multinational Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT)’ to support the implementation of UN Security Council resolutions on North Korea sanctions at a press conference in Seoul.

The MSMT involved a total of 11 countries, including South Korea, the US, Japan, France, the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The launch of the new North Korea sanctions is a replacement organization for the termination of the UN Security Council’s North Korea Sanctions Committee’s expert panel’s term extension, which Russia, a permanent member, exercised its veto at the UN Security Council plenary session in March.
Russia and China attempted to neutralize the UN Security Council’s North Korea sanctions framework, and the North Korea sanctions monitoring organization attempted by South Korea, the US, and Japan outside the UN Security Council appears to be an alternative.
On the 17th, North Korea announced through the Korean Central News Agency that it had “revised the constitution to define South Korea as a ‘hostile state.’”

The Yomiuri reported that “Late last year, the General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea abandoned the North-South peace unification policy and defined South Korea as a hostile state,” and that “this constitutional revision has made its hostile stance toward South Korea even clearer.” Yomiuri continued, “The news agency reported that the North Korean military blew up roads and railroads leading to South Korea from the north of the Military Demarcation Line on the 15th,” and “He claimed that the bombing was based on the ‘constitutional requirement that South Korea be thoroughly defined as a hostile nation.’”

Katsuhisa Furukawa, a former member of the UN Security Council’s North Korea Sanctions Committee Expert Panel, told VOA on the 17th, “This new multilateral organization will not have legal binding force on all UN member states, but with the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore joining the new multilateral organization, it will be able to have significant legal binding force around the world.” He added, “On the other hand, since the MSMT is comprised of like-minded countries, its fairness and credibility could be challenged, and since it is not an organization under the UN Security Council, there is a possibility that the results of the investigation could be challenged and the decision could not be followed.”

Charles King Mallory, a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation, told VOA on the same day that regarding MSMT’s UN-external organization, “The good news is that there are six UN Security Council resolutions that can respond to North Korea’s sanctions evasion,” and that “it is clear that not receiving UN approval is worse than receiving UN approval, but UN approval can never be obtained because of Russia,” and that “that is why MSMT is the next best option.”

The joint statement of the vice foreign ministers stated, “The vice ministers expressed serious concerns about the deepening of North Korea-Russia military cooperation, including arms transfers that violate relevant UN Security Council resolutions,” and “expressed serious concerns about illegal arms transfers, malicious cyber activities, and overseas worker dispatches to fund North Korea’s illegal weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, and agreed to continue trilateral efforts to stop them,” confirming the future ‘UN-external system.’