The North Korea regime is the most comprehensive set of UN-mandated sanctions in force and, because of the Panel of Experts, the best-documented evasion environment in existence.
Why the documentation is so much better
Most sanctions programmes generate enforcement records: an authority finds a violation and publishes what it found. The DPRK regime additionally generated investigative records, because the Security Council appointed a standing panel to look for violations and publish what it saw.
That panel no longer exists. Russia vetoed renewal of its mandate in March 2024 and it lapsed the following month, leaving S/2024/215 as the final report in a series running back to 2010. Eleven states established the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team outside the UN system to continue the work, and its first two reports — on arms transfers with Russia, and on cyber operations and IT workers — are cited throughout this site.
The result is a body of public reporting containing photographs of ship-to-ship transfers, corporate records for front companies, registry correspondence about fraudulently flagged vessels, and analysis of cryptocurrency theft and laundering, at a level of specificity no regulator produces.
Almost every maritime technique described on this site can be illustrated from that material.
The characteristic techniques
Because the regime is near-comprehensive, evasion is not about finding gaps in a rule but about concealing the counterparty entirely. That produces a distinct profile: at-sea transfers rather than port calls, transponder gaps, fraudulent flags, front companies in third countries for procurement and banking, and, increasingly, cryptocurrency as a revenue source and settlement rail.
The British American Tobacco and Essentra settlements are both DPRK cases, and both turn on front companies rather than on anything maritime.