Nork trade with China booms under 'sanctions'

Washington Post:

As the United Nations moves this week to sanction North Korea for its second nuclear test, there is strong evidence that a previous international squeeze did not work.

Thanks to booming business with neighboring China, North Korea's overseas trade has grown substantially since the U.N. Security Council imposed punitive sanctions after the government of Kim Jong Il exploded its first nuclear device in 2006.

Trade volume rose last year to its highest level since 1990, when a far more prosperous and less isolated North Korea was heavily subsidized by the Soviet Union, according to an analysis by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, a government-funded organization in Seoul.

North Korean exports surged 23 percent last year, compared with the previous year, and imports jumped 33 percent, the agency said. It found that China's share of overseas trade with the North is soaring, up from 33 percent in 2003 to 73 percent last year.

The Security Council sanctions have had "no perceptible effect" on North Korea's trade with its largest partners, according to another study by Marcus Noland, a North Korea expert at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.

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It appears that China still has the North Koreans back when it comes to non lethal sanctions. They both appear to be playing us while the North continues to do what it wants without consequence.