Is South Korea Running A Courier Service for North Korea? Mysterious Flight from Incheon, Ended up Flying to Uganda via Seongnam and the UAE

2018-11-24, Tara O

A mysterious flight that put “N/A” as the destination in its flight plan took off from Incheon (ICN) airport on November 19, 2018.  Although the destination was not revealed, according a flight tracking app, the airplane went to Seoul Air Base also known as (aka) Seongnam Air Base aka K-16 Air Base.  This is a military base where the South Korean presidential aircraft fly in and out of.

When the airplane flew from Incheon airport, the flight number was KE1495 (tail number HL7721).  After it arrived at the Seongnam Air Base, the same aircraft changed its flight number to KE9963 (tail number HL7721), when it flew to Dubai (again, the destination was not revealed in the flight plan).  The first “9” means it is a chartered aircraft. Thus it appears the South Korean government chartered a flight from Korean Air. This aircraft is Boeing 777-200ER. (ER stands for extended range). It has the capacity to transport 150,000 pounds of cargo.  It can, of course, carry passengers.

Korean Air gave “military secret” as a reason for not revealing who or what the aircraft is carrying and why the aircraft did not file its destinations.

The mysterious aircraft, from Seongnam Air Base, flew to Dubai  (~4,000 miles) in the UAE arriving there on November 19 at 10:59 p.m.  The next day, the flight departed from Dubai at 1:05 a.m for Entebbe in Uganda (~2,300 miles), arriving there at 6:30 a.m.  The Seongnam-Dubai-Entebbe flight took 18 hours. And it returned via Dubai back to Seongnam Air Base on November 20.

Given the long duration of the trip, it would have required a minimum of 2 sets of pilots/copilots, but most likely 3 sets.  (Each shift requires a set of a pilot and a co-pilot.) This does not include the rest of the aircrew.

The trip occurred between November 19-20, so it got to the destination quickly and returned quickly.

What does it all mean?  Was anything/anyone from North Korea transferred to Uganda and or the UAE via South Korea? Let’s look at other facts.

The Moon administration announced it is shipping 200 tons (20,000 boxes) of mandarin oranges (tangerines) from Jeju to Pyongyang using military transport aircraft.  Four C-130 military transport aircraft made two round trips per day over two days, November 11 and 12, 2018, for a total of 16 round trips.  The cargo capacity far exceeded the amount of tangerines. Given the Moon administration’s emphasis on easing or lifting sanctions on North Korea, questions arose about what else may be in the cargo going to Pyongyang as well as what or who may be sent to South Korea from Pyongyang on the aircraft.

Interestingly, the KE9963 left Seongnam  on November 19 for Entebbe, via Dubai, not too long after the  C-130s finished their tangerine-delivery trips to Pyongyang.   The mysterious aircraft did not go directly to Entebbe from the Incheon Airport, but left Incheon to go to an air base in Seongnam first.  Might it have gone there first to pick up cargo and/or personnel?   Why did the aircraft put “N/A” for its various destinations in the flight plans, which is not a normal procedure?

Uganda

Bruce Bechtol’s latest book North Korean Military Proliferation in the MIddle East and Africa shows North Korea’s proliferation activities to state and non-state actors in the middle east, Africa, and elsewhere.  Uganda is among North Korea’s customers.  According to the book, Uganda acknowledged in 2016 that it has an active contract with North Korea to train pilots and technicians in the military that run through 2018. (126)  North Korea has trained other parts of Uganda’s military, sold weapons to Uganda, and helped Uganda refurbish its weapons system. (125) North Korea is also suspected of helping Uganda build and operate a small arms factory. (125)

The United Arab Emirates (UAE)

The UAE and South Korean officials have had relatively frequent contacts since the Moon administration began.

Im Jong-seok, the Blue House Chief of Staff, has visited the UAE (and Lebanon) in December 2017 as a Special Envoy, taking the presidential plane, purportedly to cheer the South Korean troops deployed to the UAE, whom the then-Defense Minister Song already cheered a few weeks prior.  The Blue House announced Im’s visit after he departed, and the public and the National Assembly were surprised.  When Im Jong-seok returned, the National Assembly summoned Im to appear to explain why he visited the UAE and Lebanon, but Im skipped the meeting and went on leave that afternoon.  Im never explained why he made the trip.

On January 9, 2018, the UAE sent Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, one of the UAE’s royal family’s most trusted advisers, who handles, among other matters, the sovereign wealth funds, to South Korea.  He met with Im Jong-seok, who was clearly happy to see him.

President Moon Jae-in also visited the UAE in March 2018.  Moon invited the UAE’s leader Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan to South Korea.

On August 28, 2018, the Blue House announced that Im had a 25-minute phone call with Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak of the UAE.

On November 2, 2018, Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, visited South Korea and met with Im Jong-seok.  President Moon Jae-in did not meet with him, rather he went on leave.

South Korea and the UAE held a signing ceremony for the Agreement on the Military Cooperation between the Government of the Republic of Korea and the UAE Government (대한민국 정부와 UAE 정부 간의 군사 협력에 관한 협정) on November 15, 2006, which became effective on May 13, 2007, all during the Rho Moo-hyun administration (2003-2008).  The agreement includes military cooperation activities, for which South Korea deployed its military to the UAE to train the UAE’s special forces and conduct joint exercises.

In 2009, South Korea also won a $20.4 billion contract with the UAE to build four nuclear power plants and in October 2016, it won a $49.4 billion contract to operate the nuclear power plants.  (Note: In 2017, upon Moon Jae-in’s election as the president, one of the first items Moon announced was South Korea’s nuclear energy exit.)

As with Uganda, the UAE is also an arms customer of North Korea.  In June 2015, the UAE purchased $100 million worth of weapons—rockets, machine guns, rifles–from North Korea to support the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen.  According to Samuel Ramani,

The UAE’s covert arms purchases from Pyongyang can be explained by Abu Dhabi’s belief that North Korea is a potentially valuable missile system supplier, and the UAE’s desire to deter North Korea from selling sophisticated military technology to Iran and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.  …Abu Dhabi has maintained commercial linkages with anti-Western nuclear-armed states, so it can respond swiftly to a major Iranian violation of the JCPOA agreement.

Source:  The Diplomat

Key Points

• Large cargo capacity transport aircraft have been going back and forth between South Korea and North Korea
• A chartered Korean Air aircraft flew from Incheon airport to Seongnam Air Base to Dubai to Entebbe and back, all without filing destinations, which suggests secrecy
• North Korea has proliferation relations with Uganda and the UAE.
• The Moon administration, through its Chief of Staff Im Jong-seok, has developed close ties with the UAE.

Question:

Is it possible for arms and personnel from North Korea, and cash back to North Korea, to be transferred via South Korean C-130s and a chartered aircraft to evade the sanctions?