North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, smiles after the test-firing of an unspecified missile at an undisclosed location in North Korea. (AP)

North Korea continued to enhance its nuclear and ballistic missile programs last year in breach of United Nations sanctions, according to a confidential UN report seen by Reuters on Monday.

The country also illicitly imported refined petroleum and exported some $370 million worth of coal with the help of Chinese barges, the report added.

The 67-page report to the UN Security Council North Korea sanctions committee, which is due to be made public next month, comes as the United States tries to revive stalled denuclearization talks with North Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un threatened to expand his nuclear arsenal and develop more sophisticated atomic weapons systems, saying the fate of relations with the United States depends on. Ending the North Korean ballistic missile program, but the talks were suspended with the change in U.S. Administrations in 2001. The United States and North Korea are now engaged in Six-Party Talks that include China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea aimed at ending the North Korean nuclear weapons program. The panel’s report was issued as U.S. Efforts to get North Korea to rein in its nuclear and ballistic missile programs remain stalled, with little prospect of a new summit between President Donald Trump and Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong Un before the U.S. Presidential election in November.

“In 2019, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) did not halt its illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs, which it continued to enhance, in violation of Security Council resolutions,” the independent U.N. sanctions monitors wrote.

“Despite its extensive indigenous capability it uses illicit external procurement for some components and technology.”

North Korea has been subjected to U.N. sanctions since 2006. They have been strengthened by the 15-member Security Council over the years in a bid to cut off funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

SHIP-TO-SHIP TRANSFERS

The sanctions monitors said that in a fresh bid to evade sanctions, North Korea had started to export millions of tonnes of commodities – banned since 2017 – using barges.

“According to a Member State, the DPRK exported 3.7 million metric tons of coal between January and August 2019, with an estimated value of $370 million,” the report said.

“According to the Member State, most DPRK coal exports, an estimated 2.8 million metric tons, were conducted via ship-to-ship transfers from DPRK-flagged vessels to Chinese local barges.”

The unidentified member state told the monitors that barges had delivered coal directly to three ports in China’s Hangzhou Bay and also to facilities along the Yangtze river.

The U.N. monitors also said a member state reported that North Korea had exported at least one million tonnes of sand from river dredging, worth at least $22 million, to Chinese ports.

Pyongyang ally China has repeatedly said it is implementing U.N. sanctions.

In a statement, China’s mission to the United Nations described any accusations against China as “baseless.”

“On the implementation of the Security Council resolutions concerning the DPRK, China has always faithfully and seriously fulfilled its international obligations and sustained huge losses and tremendous pressure in the process,” a spokesperson for China’s U.N. mission said.

The sanctions monitors reported that North Korea continued to illicitly import refined petroleum through ship-to-ship transfers at sea and direct deliveries.

Since 2017, North Korea’s annual imports of refined petroleum have been capped by the U.N. Security Council at 500,000 barrels. The monitors said the United States reported that between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31 last year, Pyongyang imported refined petroleum that exceeded the cap “many times over.”

‘UNINTENDED EFFECTS’

While U.N. sanctions are not meant to harm North Korean civilians, the U.N. report said: “There can be little doubt that U.N. sanctions have had unintended effects on the humanitarian situation and aid operations, although access to data and evidence is limited and there is no reliable methodology that disambiguates UN sanctions from other factors.”

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Russia and China have raised concerns that sanctions were harming North Korean civilians, and have expressed hope that easing some restrictions could help break the deadlock in nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang.

But the United States, France and Britain said now is not the time to consider lifting sanctions.

North Korea has said it is no longer bound by a commitment to halt nuclear and missile testing, blaming the United States for failing to meet an end-2019 deadline to show more flexibility in nuclear talks and in “brutal and inhumane” sanctions.

The U.N. report said North Korea conducted 13 missile tests last year, launching at least 25 missiles, including new types of short range and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

“It continued to develop infrastructure and capacity for its missile program,” the monitors said.

The sanctions monitors also concluded that North Korea continued to carry out cyber attacks against financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges globally.

“These attacks have resulted in monetary losses and have provided illicit revenue for the DPRK in violation of financial sanctions,” the report said.

“These attacks are low-risk, high-reward, difficult to detect, and their increasing sophistication can frustrate attribution.”

Global concern over North Korean nuclear capabilities has spiked again, as the nation appears to have fired four ballistic missiles that traveled about 1,000 km. (more than 600 miles) into waters near Tokyo on Monday morning, according to reports from the South Korean military and Japanese officials. The tests are merely the latest in a string of hair-raising launches, including a reportedly successful test in February of a new kind of nuclear-capable missile and actual nuclear tests in 2016.

But, though that concern is high recently, it is decades old. Python download csv from link.

The history of North Korea’s nuclear program can be traced back to the Cold War, when the Korean War convinced leader Kim Il Sung — who ruled the nation from 1948 to 1994 — that the country needed to protect itself from the U.S., and the Soviet Union helped its fellow communist nation get the resources to do just that. (“Are you short of arms?” Stalin is said to have asked Kim when the conflict began in 1950. ”We’ll give them to you. You must strike the southerners in the teeth.”)

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In the 1950s, “Kim Il Sung began working to amass an arsenal potent enough to deter a feared U.S. attack,” even after a 1953 ceasefire ended the Korean War, according to TIME’s Jan. 13, 2003, cover story on North Korean nuclear ambitions. As that story explained, the end of the war followed implications from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who took office in 1953, that nuclear weapons were on the table as a way to bring the conflict to an end. Even though the war did end that year, the idea that nuclear weapons might be necessary made its mark on North Korea. In the wake of the armistice, the Soviet Union helped North Korea begin the research that would be needed to eventually achieve nuclear capability.

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In 1963, TIME reported that North Korea was one of the only countries that had announced that they would not sign the nuclear test-ban treaty that was President John F. Kennedy’s attempt to “get the genie back in the bottle” and slow the global nuclear arms race by banning testing in the atmosphere, in space and underwater. In fact, North Korea continued on its path and got its first nuclear reactor — a small one designed for industrial research — two years later.

As the conflict in Vietnam escalated, so did North Korea’s aggression toward the U.S. And, as a 1969 TIME article explained, the nation and its leaders w

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