Australia's ABC News recently aired a report exposing the North Korean regime's use of front companies in other countries in the Pacific to process their illicit arms export business. The expose revealed that two of the regime's operatives are using foreign passports obtained from two countries in the Pacific.
Ken Kato, a Japanese human rights activist, has taken up the case of fighting human rights abuses in North Korea by investigating the activities of the regime. He has uncovered documentation that shows that the North Korean regime has a company based in Hong Kong.
New East International Trading Limited is the name of the company that Mr. Kato has found documentation about. It is headed by two North Korean citizens who have been identified as members of North Korea's second economic committee. The committee is responsible for dealing with the regime's arms trading.
Mr. Kato dug a bit further into the company. He was able to find out that the two North Korean directors have seemingly changed nationality. Both had obtained Kiribatian passports.They later presumably were able to change nationality again as both directors have been shown to be in possession of passports from the Seychelles. It seems that the two North Koreans are using their change in nationalities to run the Hong Kong based company in order to facilitate the movement of arms.
North Korea have made use of foreign passports for their operatives before in order to pursue illicit activities.
