Analysis | Secrets of ‘Office 39’: North Korean leader Kim gets Russian fuel via Singapore dealers, says defector who fled China

North Korea secures up to 300,000 tonnes of oil products from Russia each year through Singapore-based dealers, a defector who formerly managed funds for the leadership has told Kyodo News, posing a challenge for the United States as it seeks to isolate Pyongyang.

“North Korea has procured Russia-produced fuel from Singapore brokers and others since the 1990s...It is mostly diesel oil and partly gasoline,” Ri Jong-ho, 59, a former senior official of Office 39 of the Workers’ Party of Korea, said recently in the US capital in his first interview with media under his own name.

Ri also said North Korea relies more on Russia than China for fuel to keep its economy moving, indicating that the US drive for Beijing to restrict oil supplies over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes will only have a limited effect.

“It is a wrong perception that North Korea is completely dependent on China,” he said.

Petroleum products have been shipped to North Korea by tankers leaving Vladivostok and Nakhodka, both in the Russian Far East, with the fuel widely used for cars, ships and trains, helping to support the North’s economy, Ri said.