South Korea Values Smartphones For North Korean Athletes At The 2024 Paris Olympics Can Violate UN Sanctions

Illustration of the 2024 Paris Olympics. (Wikimedia Commons/Ibex73)

JAKARTA - South Korean authorities warned on Thursday that North Korean Olympic athletes receiving Samsung smartphones could violate UN Security Council (DK PBB) resolutions regarding Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and missile programs.

It started with Samsung, a sponsor of the Olympic Partner since the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, distributing the special Olympic edition 6 Galaxy Z Flip smartphone to athletes competing this year.

The headquartered Free Asia radio in Washington, United States reported, citing the International Olympic Committee (IOC), North Korea receiving Samsung smartphones for its athletes.

The Unification Ministry said smartphones were classified as prohibited items based on UN DK 2397 Resolution, which was adopted on December 22, 2017. The ministry noted that the device could be used for commercial and military purposes.

"North Korea's Olympic athletes receiving Samsung smartphones can violate UN DK Resolution 2397 which directly and indirectly prohibits the supply, sale, and transfer of all electrical equipment to North Korea," an Unification Ministry official said. August 9th.

"Actions for giving, or providing, Samsung phones can also be seen as violations of UN sanctions. The IOC has a final decision on this issue," he said.

The IOC was not immediately willing to comment.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also gave a similar response.

"The government will continue to make the diplomatic efforts needed to cooperate with the international community to ensure the implementation of the UN DK resolution as a whole," said a foreign ministry official.

Photos of Olympic table tennis players from North Korea and South Korea taking a group photo on the medal podium in Paris went viral in South Korea last week, hailed as a rare cross-border union show.

Earlier, Park Choong-kwon, a North Korean defector who became a member of parliament from the ruling People's Power Party on Monday claimed Pyongyang could confiscate all smartphones given to North Korean Olympic athletes.

"It is possible that North Korean authorities confiscated all their cellphones before opening the box," Park said in a radio show.

Earlier, at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, North Korea refused to receive Samsung's smartphone after organizers offered to provide it on condition that North Korean athletes returned the phone before leaving.

Experts advise South Korea to take a cautious approach to avoiding tensions with the IOC, as the Olympics are meant to deliver a peace message.

"I think it's very regrettable that the government and the media are trying to make a fuss about smartphones. The IOC follows its own guidelines on how to deal with sanctions and disputes over political issues. Proposing diplomatic protests can be considered a major insult to the IOC," said Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korean Institute for National Unity.

"Unless the North Korean delegation refuses to receive Samsung smartphones, the IOC or the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee will likely not ask them to return their phones before they return to their home countries." Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korean studies at Ewha Womans University, said North Korean Olympic athletes who received Samsung phones not only violated UN sanctions but also US sanctions.

"It makes more sense for the US to ask questions, but I doubt it because it's not a big deal. The purpose of sanctions is to prevent human rights violations, proliferation of nuclear weapons, and to have a bad impact on North Korea's economy, but smartphones are not always linked to serve these objectives," he said.

Park added that Samsung's smartphone could not possibly work on North Korea's network.

"North Korean authorities are likely to confiscate athletes' phones to limit access to foreign news programs about North Korea and prevent them from spreading outside information," he said.