North Korean ship Jin Teng seized, Ocean Maritime Management Company sanctioned

Jin Teng

The Philippines said on March 5  it had seized a North Korean freighter that was covered by harsher United Nations' sanctions against Pyongyang over its nuclear program.

Manila will also deport the vessel's 21 North Korean crew and will await a U.N. inspection team from the United Nations.  Jin Teng   6,830 deadweight tonne (dwt) cargo ship Jin , flying a Sierra Leone flag, arrived on Feb. 27 and was unloading palm kernels.    The U.N. resolution said the 31 ships were "economic resources controlled or operated by Ocean Maritime Management and therefore subject to the asset freeze".

The Jin Teng has called at Palembang, Indonesia, and Kaohsiung, Taiwan, since the beginning of this year.

[July 30 2014  Ocean Maritime Management Company sanctioned for smuggling arms on Chong Chon Gang, North Korean ship seized ]

U.S. Treasury Department  announced July 30 it was imposing sanctions on the Chongchongang Shipping Company, which owned the ship. It also sanctioned Ocean Maritime Management Company, which allegedly provided the ship's captain and crew with instructions to conceal the weapons and provide false documentation

[February 15 Chong Chon Gang:departs Panama for Cuba]

Chong Chon Gang, North Korean ship seized with undeclared Cuban weapons on board is returning to Cuba, says the Panamanian government.Panama's Foreign Ministry said the ship set off on February 15.

[July 31 2013]

About 25 percent of the sugar has been removed so far. Officials have found most of the weapons Havana said were on board, including the two fighter jets, originally produced by the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, and two missile radar systems.

Investigators have gone through most of two storage houses in the 155-meter (510 foot) vessel, but three more warehouses remain.

Pentagon had long since written off the island as a military threat.

Since Cuba's military doctrine was designed to deter any attack, it needs to maintain the arms it has, he added.

'Cuba cannot afford to buy anything newer and does not have repair facilities of its own for such needs,' he said.

'Thus if it is not to scrap, for example, the aircraft entirely, it must repair and potentially update them in some areas.'

In early July, a top North Korean general, Kim Kyok Sik, visited Cuba and met counterparts on the island.

[July 22]

PANAMA CITY, Panama — Panamanian authorities have found two Soviet-era MiG-21 fighter jets aboard Chong Chon Gang, a North Korea-flagged ship seized this month as it tried to pass through the Panama Canal after departing from Cuba.

[July 18]

Arms smuggler?

Another old North Korean freighter, the 390-foot O Un Chong Nyon Ho, had made the same trip last year without attracting suspicion, passing through the Panama Canal and calling at the same two Cuban ports.

The two freighters were among five North Korean cargo vessels that had traversed the Panama Canal since 2010, underscoring the rarity of North Korean shipping in the area.

It was not known what cargo the O Un Chong Nyon Ho might have carried to or from Cuba in 2012 but it made the same Cuban port calls as its impounded sister vessel, stopping first in Havana for a few days in May 2012, then visiting Puerto Padre, a major sugar export point, for five days, then returning to Havana for a stopover of about three weeks before heading home.

O UN CHONG NYON HO IMO: 8330815

Description:

Port of registry: Chongjin (North Korea) 

IMO: 8330815 

Call sign: HMAD 

Ex-names: - - - - 

Type/class: General cargo 

Built by: Chongjin Shipyard - Huichon (North Korea) in 1983 

DWT: 9,913 

Home port: Chongjin

Class society: Korean Shipping Register

Build year: 1983

Builder*: Chongjin Shipyard

Huichon, North Korea

Owner: Ocean Maritime Management

Pyongyang, North Korea

Manager: Ocean Maritime Management

Pyongyang, North Korea

North Korea is also known to be seeking to evade sanctions and get spare parts for its own weapons systems, particularly Mig jet fighters. That raises the possibility that in lieu of cash, Cuba was paying for the repairs with a mix of sugar and jet equipment, experts said.

“We think it is credible that they could be sending some of these systems for repair and upgrade work,” said Neil Ashdown, an analyst for IHS Jane’s Intelligence. “But equally there is stuff in that shipment that could be used in North Korea and not be going back.Panamanian authorities said it might take a week to search the ship, since so far they have only examined two of its five container sections.

[July 17]

On July 17, Cuba, one of North Korea's few allies, claimed the shipment as its own, with the foreign ministry listing 240 metric tons of "obsolete defensive weapons," including two anti-aircraft missile systems, as being on board.

There were also "nine missiles in parts and spares," various Mig-21 aircraft parts and 15 plane motors, "all of it manufactured in the mid-20th century" and "to be repaired and returned to Cuba."

"The agreements subscribed by Cuba in this field are supported by the need to maintain our defensive capacity in order to preserve national sovereignty," the ministry said in an English-language statement.   Analysts in Seoul said the North, which successfully launched a long-range rocket to put a satellite into orbit last December, was fully capable of providing missile repair services for other countries.

"But we cannot rule out the possibility of North Korea importing parts for its own Soviet-era missiles", Shin In-Kyun, president of the private Korea Defence Network

[July 16]

Chong Chon Gang IMO: 7937317

SNR-75 fire control radar

The Chong Chon Gang was tracked leaving Vostochnyy, Russia on April 12, according to Lloyd's List Intelligence, a maritime intelligence company. It was next registered arriving in Balboa, on the Panama Canal's Pacific side, on May 31, and crossed the waterway the next day with a stated destination of Havana, Cuba.

It then disappeared from the tracking system and reappeared in Manzanillo, Panama, on July 11, according to shipping data obtained by research group IHS Maritime. IHS said there were indications it had changed cargo in the interim.

IHS Jane, a global analytics firm, said it had identified the equipment shown in the images as an SNR-75 'Fan Song' fire control radar for the SA-2 family of surface-to-air missiles.


[earlier]

Listen to the full report in the following audio.

 

Hidden in sugar

Panamanian authorities have seized a North Korean-flagged ship traveling from Cuba that was carrying “undeclared military cargo," Panama's president, Ricardo Martinelli, said late Monday night.It retained a ship in the Port of Manzanillo in Columbus with military equipment from Cuba, North Korea flag  President Ricardo Martinelli said : "The ship brought sugar, removing the first litter found military equipment, the captain committed suicide, and the crew refused to cooperate. "
The seizure reportedly took place last Friday afternoon when Panamanian security forces boarded the Chong Chon Gang IMO: 7937317, as it prepared to enter the Panama Canal, apparently on its way to North Korea.
Vessel's Details
Ship Type: Cargo
Year Built: 1977
Length x Breadth: 155 m X 20 m
Gross Tonnage: 9147, DeadWeight: 13990 t
Speed recorded (Max / Average): 6 / 5.5 knots
Flag: DPR Korea [KP]
Call Sign: HMZF
IMO: 7937317, MMSI: 445114000
Last Position Received
Area: Panama Canal
Latitude / Longitude: 9.3700° / -79.8846° (Map)
Speed/Course 0 knots / 207˚
Last Known Port: MANZANILLO
Info Received: 2d 3h 41min ago (AIS Source: 98)
Not Currently in Range
Itineraries History
Voyage Related Info (Last Received)
Draught: 8.9 m
Destination: PANAMA
ETA: 2013-07-09 17:30
Info Received: 2013-07-14 06:56 (2d, 3h 41min ago)

SSV-175 Viktor Leonov (ex Odograf 1988 Northern Fleet) in Cuba

SSV-175 Viktor Leonov 

SSV-175 Viktor Leonov (ex Odograf 1988 Northern Fleet)
Type: Intelligence collection ship 
Displacement: 3,470 tons full load
 Length: 94.4 m Beam: 14.6 m Draught: 4.5 m Propulsion: 2 shafts, 
2 Sulzer diesels, 4,400 bhp Speed: 16 knots Complement: 146 (= 6 passengers) 
Sensors and processing systems: 
Sonar: Pamyat hull mounted arrays, HF dipping Electronic warfare & decoys: 
Intercept arrays 
Armament: 
 2 × AK-630 six-barreled Gatling 30 mm/L60 guns 
2 x SA-N-8 surface-to-air missiles


[2013]

USS Cowpens{CG 63)

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Kerry and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been equally critical of the air Defense zone, should stop harping on the issue. "The show the relevant parties have put on is enough. They should give it a rest. If they really care about this region's peace, they should ... stop fomenting trouble," China's official news agency Xinhua, in an English language commentary, accused the U.S. ship of deliberately provocative behavior. "On December 5, U.S. missile cruiser Cowpens, despite warnings from China's aircraft carrier task group, broke into the Chinese navy's drilling waters in the South China Sea, and almost collided with a Chinese warship nearby," it said. "Even before the navy training, Chinese maritime authorities have posted a navigation notice on their website, and the U.S. warship, which should have had knowledge of what the Chinese were doing there, intentionally carried on with its surveillance of China's Liaoning aircraft carrier and triggered the confrontation."
[December 17]
A day after the United States gave $32.5 million to stiffen maritime security in South East Asia, the bulk of it for Vietnam, Kerry said the United States would provide $40 million to the Philippines over three years to build its capacity to police the South China Sea. "We don't view the situation as one of rising tensions and we don't want rising tensions," Kerry told a news conference with his Philippine counterpart Albert del Rosario. "What we are involved in are normal processes by which we work with other countries in order to raise their maritime protection capacity."

[December 16]

"Bad guys always claim innocence first," a Chinese source that was familiar with this confrontation, told the Global Times on Sunday, adding that the American missile cruiser had entered within 45 kilometers of the inner defense layer of the Chinese fleet that day. 

"The USS Cowpens was tailing after and harassing the Liaoning formation. It took offensive actions at first towards the Liaoning formation on the day of the confrontation," said the source.

It is a fact that China has already announced three regions in the South China Sea as its military areas. The outside world knows that they are used for scientific research and training of the Liaoning aircraft carrier. Meanwhile, many areas in the South China Sea are China's exclusive economic zones. Clearly, the US missile cruiser has come to China's threshold and posed a threat to China's military security, says An official Chinese newspaper

  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced December 16 that the United States will boost maritime security assistance to the countries of Southeast Asia amid rising tensions with Beijing.

On his first visit to Vietnam as America's top diplomat, Kerry pledged an additional $32.5 million for members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to protect their territorial waters and navigational freedom in the South China Sea, China's new East China Sea air defense zone, saying it "clearly increases the risk of a dangerous miscalculation or an accident" that could lead to possible conflict between China and Japan over a string of small islands that each claim as their own.

The United States is "very concerned about recent actions that have increased tensions between China and Japan and we call for intensified negotiations and diplomatic initiatives.

"The zone should not be implemented, and China should refrain from taking similar unilateral actions elsewhere, particularly in the South China Sea,"


[December 14]
On December 5, 2013, USS Cowpens, (CG 63) was involved in a minor confrontation with a small Chinese warship that was escorting the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning while operating in International waters in the South China Sea. The Chinese amphibious dock ship [Jinggang Shan (999 /井冈山) Type 071 Yuzhao class amphibious transport dock (LPD)?] crossed directly in front of the Cowpens and then halted. The two vessels were barely 500 yards away when the captain of Cowpens ordered "all stop".

The US Navy said that the USS Cowpens, (CG 63) a guided-missile cruiser, had been forced to take evasive action to avoid a collision with a ship from the People’s Liberation Army Navy on December 5. Another U.S. military official said that the incident was ultimately resolved through ship-to-ship communications via radio between the Cowpens and a Chinese aircraft carrier in the vicinity. The official said that at some point there was direct communication between the Cowpens and the Chinese vessel that was harassing it, but the official was unaware of what was said during the exchange.

[{December 6]

But China’s declaration of the expanded air control zone highlighted a potentially volatile dispute between China and South Korea, since it covered Ieodo, a submerged reef south of Jeju, an island off the south coast of South Korea. Ieodo, which South Korea says it effectively controls, is believed to be surrounded by natural gas and minerals deposits.


Despite fierce protests from environmentalists, South Korea is building a $970 million naval base in Jeju, a home for 20 warships, including submarines, that the navy says will protect shipping lanes in the East China Sea for South Korea’s oil-dependent, export-driven economy as well as enabling it to respond quickly to any dispute with China over the rock.


Under international maritime law, countries cannot claim a submerged rock as territory but can claim the right to control and use waters and natural resources around it. Both China and South Korea claim such rights over the reef. Currently, the Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic Administration manages a research station built on the rock. The partial demolition of the 1.2 kilometer-long rock formation is scheduled to take place over the following three months.


The Jeju Naval Base (Hangul: 제주 해군기지; Hanja:濟州海軍基地) is a planned military base on Jeju Island, South Korea (coterminous with Jeju Province, or Jeju-do).


;April 12 2013]

Korean media said Han Jun deploy two Aegis-class warships to monitor North Korean missile.   Yonhap quoted South Korean military sources as saying, in response to the possibility of North Korea launched a medium-range missiles, South Korean military has deployed in waters near two equipped with radar Aegis destroyers used to monitor and t rack.

The source said the two 7,600-ton Aegis destroyers were deployed in Korean waters east and west sides standby, two warships are equipped with a detection range of 1,000 kilometers of the SPY-1 radar if North Korea launched a missile can be rail track.

USS Donald Cook: sm-3 interceptor missile-equipped destroyer arrives at Rota Spain

PACIFIC OCEAN (Feb. 13, 2013) A Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block 1A interceptor is launched from the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG 70) during a Missile Defense Agency and U.S. Navy test in the Pacific Ocean. The SM-3 Block 1A successfully intercepted a target missile that had been launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Barking Sands, Kauai, Hawaii.

The USS Donald Cook, which arrived at Rota Naval Station, Spain on 11 February, is the first of four ballistic missile defence (BMD)-capable destroyers that will be stationed at the base. The ships are capable of tracking and shooting down ballistic missiles in flight, using their Aegis radar system and SM-3 interceptor missiles. These capabilities will make the destroyers a key component of NATO’s missile defense shield for Europe.

[March 19 2011]


112 Tomahawk cruise missile were fired from five U.S. ships — the guided-missile destroyers USS Stout and USS Barry, and three submarines, USS Providence, USS Scranton and USS Florida.
USS Florida (SSGN-728), an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, was the sixth ship of the United States Navy to be named for the 27th state. She was converted to a cruise missile submarine, and re-designated SSGN-728.
back
and back
and and

Yekaterinburg: rubber-coated outer hull flamed up

The fire now put out. Wooden scaffolding around K-84 caught fire.The blaze soon spread to the submarine's rubber-coated outer hull. Firefighters were still working at the scene, pouring water over the outer hull as well as the space between it and the inner hull,

The blaze at the Roslyakovo dock, one of the main dockyards of Russia's northern fleet 1,500 km (900 miles) north of Moscow, is believed to have started when wooden scaffolding caught fire during repairs to the submarine Yekaterinburg, which some Russian news agencies said had been hoisted into a dry dock.

K-84 Delta class Ekaterinburg 17 February 1982 17 March 1985 30 December 1985 Northern Active, overhaul in 2002, overhaul complete, upgraded Sineva missiles [9]


Delta class submarines in fiction

In the novel Ice by James Follett a Delta II class submarine called the Podorny is dispatched to the South Atlantic to search for a missing British submarine.[20]
In the pilot movie for seaQuest DSV a heavily modified Delta IV was being operated by pirates, led by former seaQuest captain Marilyn Stark.
In the video game Crysis Warhead, the player character incorrectly identifies a cargo submarine as a Project 914 Delta IV class. The submarine in question has the missile bay removed and replaced with a large cargo bay.
In Terminator Salvation: Cold War, Dmitri Losenko commanded a Delta IV-class submarine called the Gorshkov. When the US launches an attack on Russia the Gorshkov launches an attack on Alaska.

Light:: Belize-flag missile laden tramp to N. Korea

"The North Koreans claimed the ship was going to Bangladesh with a cargo of industrial chemicals," The White House said. "We have no way to verify whether any of that was true. And we had good reason to be suspicious with this ship, which in the past has been involved in the export of weapons to [Myanmar] and other locations in the Middle East." here
A Belize-flag ship after a standoff at sea starting May 26 returned to its originating North Korean port after interception by United States Navy which suspected it of carrying missile technology to Myanmar following several days of diplomatic pressure from Washington and Asia nations.

8415433 LIGHT V3ZA General Cargo Ship 4650 1984 21
Ship Type: Cargo
Year Built: 1984
Length x Breadth: 91 m X 15 m
DeadWeight: 4650 t
Speed recorded (Max / Average): 10.7 / 9.8 knots
Flag: Belize [BZ]
Call Sign: V3ZA
IMO: 8415433, MMSI: 312590000

M.Star: U.S. officials are watching the situation closely

Mitsui releases photos of explosion damage

“We have no information the tanker was attacked,” said State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley... The U.S. will continue to monitor developments, Crowley said. An explosion, which “may have been caused by an external attack,” occurred at 5:30 a.m. Tokyo time, injuring one of the crew, Mitsui said in a statement. The vessel, M. Star, was on its way to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates to assess the damage and no oil is leaking, earlier