NORTH KOREAN PLOY MASKS SHIPS UNDER OTHER FLAGS

HONG KONG -- When helicopter-borne Australian commandos stormed a
freighter three years ago after it was spotted unloading 110 pounds of
high-grade heroin, the ship proved to be registered in Tuvalu, a tiny
island nation in the South Pacific.

When a Spanish warship stopped a freighter carrying cement to Yemen
four years ago, the cargo vessel turned out to be carrying 15 Scud
missiles as well and was registered in Cambodia.

The two freighters had something in common: although registered
elsewhere, both were owned by North Korea.

The incidents illustrated North Korea's adroit use of so-called flags
of convenience to camouflage the movement of its cargo vessels as they
engage in tasks that sometimes violate international laws.

The North Korean ploy could both simplify and complicate the efforts
to carry out the United Nations Security Council's resolution
authorizing countries to inspect cargo entering or leaving North Korea
to see if it includes illicit weapons, say shipping executives,
lawyers and security experts.

The use of flags of convenience could also weaken moves like
Australia's on Monday to ban North Korean-flagged vessels from its
ports to protest the nuclear test.

But if Western nations suspect that a North Korean-owned vessel flying
another country's flag is carrying illicit weapons, boarding the
vessel could be simpler than if it carried North Korea's flag, said
Jonathan D. Pollack, professor of Asian and Pacific studies at the
Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

A Western nation could ask the country that registered the vessel for
permission to board it even if the vessel was not entering or leaving
North Korean waters. Practically any country would be more cooperative
about giving permission for a search than North Korea, Mr. Pollack
noted.

A North Korean crew might still resist boarding, however. The crew of
the Tuvalu-registered freighter, the Pong Su, did so when chased by
Australian forces for four days in 2003 before it was finally boarded
and captured by the commandos.

But Mr. Pollack and other experts said that flags of convenience could
still prove useful to North Korea in maintaining its arms trade
despite the Security Council resolution.

One possibility would be for North Korea to try to smuggle out weapons
or weapons components across its land borders with China or Russia,
and then to a Chinese or Russian port. The weapons could then be
loaded on a vessel secretly owned by North Korea but flying another
country's flag -- and perhaps not be closely watched by Western
intelligence services as a result.

Or weapons could be loaded on a North Korean ship flying its own flag,
and the registration of the ship could be altered after it left port.
"In the middle of the night, they could change the name and change the
flag," said Gary Wolfe, a maritime lawyer at Seward & Kissel, a New
York law firm.

Still another possibility, shipping and security experts said, would
be for a North Korean-flagged ship to transfer cargo to a North Korean
ship carrying another flag, either in port or in midocean if it were a
calm day and the cargo small enough.

Changing the registration of a ship -- and therefore its flag -- is
fairly simple. A ship owner simply sends the necessary paperwork to a
country's ship registry, along with a fee of as little as $1,000. The
vessel is not required to visit the country where it is registered, or
even go to port.

Ship registries do require basic information about a vessel's length
and tonnage. So if a ship of a certain size and displacement
disappears from one ship's registry and a vessel of equal size and
displacement pops up with a different name on another registry at the
same time, they may be the same ship and could be identified with
careful sleuthing, Mr. Wolfe said.

The Pong Su sailed from North Korea to Singapore in 2003 under a North
Korean flag. The vessel then switched its registration to Tuvalu and
sailed on to Australia, where witnesses saw a dinghy coming ashore
with what proved to be the shipment of heroin.

The freighter was seized and later used as a bombing target by the
Australian armed forces as a warning to drug traffickers. The North
Korean government denied that it had been involved.

Without specifically mentioning flags of convenience, Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned on Wednesday of the difficulty of
monitoring North Korea's trade. "There's so much moving around the
world by land, sea and air that it is practically impossible -- not
impossible, but certainly it would take a lot of countries cooperating
with a high degree of cohesion," and cohesion has been lacking, he
said during a question-and-answer period at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force
Base in Alabama.

Until 2002, North Korea tended to register its ships as Cambodian,
using a registration office that the Cambodian government had
authorized in Singapore. Marcus Hand, the Asia editor for Lloyd's
List, a shipping industry newspaper, said dozens of North Korean ships
used to carry the Cambodian flag.

He cautioned, however, that it is often difficult to know with
certainty who owns a ship, since ships are often held through various
companies registered all over the world. No one outside North Korea
really knows for sure how many cargo vessels the country has
registered under other flags.

Cambodia canceled the right of its Singapore agents to register ships
in 2002 after finding that Cambodian-registered ships were in such
poor condition that ports were reluctant to let them berth, and after
France accused a Cambodian-registered ship and its crew of
transporting cocaine. The government of Cambodia ended up authorizing
representatives in Pusan, South Korea, to manage the country's ship
registry.

Charlie Bach, the managing director of the overhauled International
Ship Registry of Cambodia, said in an e-mail message that there were
no longer any North Korean ships carrying the Cambodian flag.

The mystery lies in where North Korea's ships are registered
instead.

Several shipping executives said they believed that North Korean ships
were sailing under Mongolian and Tuvaluan flags now.

The Tuvalu ship registry said Friday in an e-mail statement that it
had been reorganized in May 2004 and had no vessels previously on
North Korean or Cambodian registries.