Hong Kong has detained a North Korean cargo vessel for possible safety violations, media reports said yesterday.
The rusting, 2,035-tonne general cargo vessel Kang Nam I was suspected of breaching 25 regulations after entering Hong Kong on Sunday.
London-based shipping publication Lloyd's List said the ship was being held under the terms of local shipping regulations, rather than those of UN sanctions imposed on North Korea after it conducted its first atom bomb test on Oct. 9.
The government's Customs and Marine Departments would not comment when contacted.
Lloyd's cited acting assistant director at the Marine Department, Lee Kai-leung, as saying that 12 safety concerns were "detainable deficiencies mainly on life-saving and fire-fighting appliances as well as navigational equipment including out-dated and obsolete charts."
Hong Kong's English-language daily the South China Morning Post reported that the 22-man vessel was not carrying any cargo when it arrived and had come to load up with scrap metal.
The newspaper cited Hong Kong's marine chief Roger Tupper as confirming the detention.
Tupper was quoted as telling the Post that eight other North Korean ships had been similarly stopped this year.
"Hong Kong is a major hub port and North Korean vessels do sometimes visit," he said. "It is not unreasonable they are subject to routine Port State Control inspections."
The reports said that the ship had arrived from Shanghai and that it was due to return home to Nampo, near Pyongyang, via Taiwan.
They said the captain, who would not give his name, had told reporters that he was unaware of Pyongyang's first-ever atom bomb test, nor of the subsequent UN sanctions.
The clampdown was put in place to prevent Kim Jong-il from transferring or importing nuclear technology and to end the trade in contraband, such as drugs and illicit cigarettes, that is believed to help fund the North's nuclear program.
The sanctions are part of a huge global diplomatic effort since the test to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS