North Korea: Officials attend year-end meeting in luxury sedans despite UN sanctions

Best This week, North Korean officials gathered the nation’s elites for an ostentatious year-end meeting. The North Korean Worker’s Party’s Central Committee convened in Pyongyang to discuss strategies for the upcoming year. According to South Korean news agency Yonhap News Agency, they drove up in opulent Mercedes S-class cars, even though the nation forbids the sale of luxury goods. Interestingly, the UN continues to impose sanctions on the supply of high-end automobiles to North Korea. North Korea’s governing party met at the end of the year to assess state policies for the current year and talk about those for 2024, with Kim Jong Un serving as the meeting’s chairman. Despite the international sanctions, party officials were spotted at the meeting, emerging from the eighth-generation S-class limousine and other luxury vehicles. The news agency pointed out that Kim Jong Un has driven a limousine among other Mercedes-Maybach S-class automobiles when making public appearances. He was also seen driving an SUV in 2020 that was probably a Lexus LX 570. UN sanctions apply to these high-end cars, prohibiting the sale of luxury autos to North Korea. Notably, this occurs a few weeks after Japanese authorities stopped a plot to transport a $70,000 Lexus automobile into North Korea, as reported in the South China Morning Post (SCMP). According to the site, the automobile was stopped on the same day that North Korea called back its envoy to Switzerland in response to an inquiry into the trafficking of ivory. The vehicle was taken during a raid on a used automobile dealership in the prefecture of Chiba on December 7. Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese news source, revealed that the showroom had filed documents declaring that the high-end vehicle was being shipped to Singapore through Bangladesh. A UN resolution prohibits the export of high-end goods, including luxury cars, to North Korea, therefore the confiscation made headlines. Following nuclear tests conducted underground by Pyongyang in 2006, the embargo went into effect. (With agency inputs)