Coal Holds Key To Stability In Korean Peninsula

On a huge monitor screen, flashlights followed some of the moving dots while many eyes were glued to the screen. As if the whole scene was from a Hollywood thriller.

- Kingshuk Banerjee

But this was no action thriller. Actually, it was a virtual shipping logistics map of the Yellow Sea and those dots resembled moving coal-carrying cargo vessels. These fleet of North Korean cargo ships were heading to the mouth of the River Taedong and from there to the domestic riverine port of Nampo to return with coal from China. Technically speaking, it was a ship-tracking screen.

Coal is playing a vital role in the complex eco-political scenario of the Korean peninsula.

Following repeated missile tests that drew international criticism, China banned all imports of North Korean coal on February 26, 2017 cutting off the country’s most important export product. Hence, the vessel carrying North Korean coal headed back to the hermit kingdom’s port of Nampo.

According to China Customs data, Pyongyang sent 2.7 million tons (mt) of coal, valued at $220.60 million, to China in the first 3 months of 2017, accounting for 43 percent of the reclusive state’s exports to its neighbour. But that total shrank to zero in Q2.

Long before the monitor screening, things got underway rapidly behind the scene. To curb coal traffic between the 2 countries, China’s customs department issued an official order on April 7 telling trading companies to return their North Korean coal cargoes. Some of the Chinese companies had to bear the brunt as well.

One of China’s biggest buyers of North Korean coal said the company had 600,000 tons of North Korean coal sitting at various ports, and a total of 2 million tons were stranded at Chinese ports. Relevant data showed that that most of these ships had left Chinese coal ports, including Weihai rt and Peng La, and would return to North Korea full or mostly filled with cargo.