The six-month confidential UN report by independent experts monitoring the implementation of UN sanctions was submitted to the Security Council North Korea sanctions committee late on Friday, Less than two months after a landmark U.S.-North Korea summit in Singapore.
According to this report, Pyongyang also violated a textile ban by exporting more than $100 million in goods between October 2017 and March 2018 to China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey and Uruguay.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the same day said North Korea’s continued work on weapons programs was inconsistent with its leader’s commitment to denuclearize.
Earlier a new intelligence report said North Korea has increased its production of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons at secret sites in recent months, contrary to Donald Trump’s claims that it was “no longer a nuclear threat”.
In a landmark summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore on June 12,in exchange for Kim’s promise to dismantle his nuclear weapons program, Trump has put on hold joint military drills with South Korea and Japan off the Korean Peninsula.
But Washington has made it clear that it won't lift tough economic sanctions against Pyongyang until its complete denuclearization.
Donald Trump claimed that North Korea was blowing up four of its big test sites and that a process of “total denuclearization ... has already started,” but officials like Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said there was no such evidence.