North Korea has fired a hypersonic missile to boost its nuclear arsenal, with Kim Jong Un overseeing the firing of the “cutting-edge” weapon.
The Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim as saying the test showed “the readiness of the DPRK’s nuclear forces.” “Important achievements have been recently made in putting our nuclear forces on a practical basis and preparing them for an actual war,” Kim said.
How is North Korea managing these hi-tech tests despite the most stringent sanctions?
North Korea does not survive sanctions by defiance, but by embedding itself in systems where rules and capacity exist, and enforcement is selectively withheld.
Turkey is one of those systems.
Ankara maintains that its ties with Pyongyang are limited and compliant with UN Security Council resolutions, yet this posture is insulation, not restraint, enabling DPRK-linked activity to be hosted, routed, licensed, and overlooked without policy decisions or agreements. In sanctions enforcement, friction is policy.
The public record is unambiguous. On 4 October 2018, the United States Treasury sanctioned a Turkey-based company for attempting to trade arms and luxury goods with North Korea, alongside Turkish executives and a DPRK diplomat hosted in Turkey to negotiate the deals.
Arms and luxury goods sit at the core of the sanctions regime. In a state with a centralised export control system and a catch-all mechanism, such negotiations cannot be unseen. In sanctions enforcement, friction is policy.
This was not isolated. In 2013, Turkish authorities intercepted a shipment of DPRK-origin weapons and gas masks transiting the Dardanelles, acting on U.S. intelligence.
A decade later, testimony before an Ankara court showed how a DPRK major general responsible for missile development entered Turkey with special permission for meetings on weapons acquisition and technology transfer. These episodes show continuity.
That continuity includes senior military engagement. In sworn testimony before an Ankara court in 2023, a Turkish arms broker described facilitating the entry of a North Korean major general responsible for the DPRK missile programme.
According to the testimony, the visit was authorised at senior levels, enabled by special permission and a dedicated visa issued via Turkey’s embassy in Beijing, and included meetings on weapons acquisition and technology transfer. This was not a commercial or diplomatic routine. It was controlled access to a sanctioned military programme at the level sanctions are designed to block.
Ankara responds with a procedure. Turkey revised its North Korea sanctions implementation plan in 2018, tightening restrictions on trade, inspections, banking presence, and labour to align with UN resolutions.
Compliance was updated on paper. Sanctions fail when enforcement is tuned. Where a catch-all regime exists but is not applied rigorously to DPRK-linked networks, the outcome is an incentive structure left intact.
Catch-all regimes exist for actors like North Korea. Export laws designed to detect high-risk end users, combined with repeated DPRK-linked activity on national territory and the absence of sustained clampdowns, indicate policy-enabled access. Warnings unaccompanied by an enforcement-hardening signal approved the tolerance. Silence functions as authorisation.
Exposure without consequence is not oversight. It is signalling. Across seizures, sanctions designations, UN reporting, and court testimony, the record shows repeated DPRK-linked activity intersecting with Turkish territory without any visible prosecutions, dismantling of networks, or recalibration of enforcement. In sanctions terms, non-enforcement after exposure constitutes knowing tolerance.
The mechanism is routine. Brokering arranges documentation, financing, and routing. Transshipment through Turkish ports, straits, free zones, and bonded warehouses obscures origin and destination while allowing paperwork to be cleaned.
Dual-use items, such as machine tools, electronics, and chemicals, move under civilian cover and become military enablers upon integration into DPRK systems. This requires a state that treats DPRK exposure as a matter of compliance management rather than a strategic threat.
This architecture enables payment. Trade-based money laundering, invoice manipulation, and layered intermediaries are established features of sanctions evasion, and Turkey has been identified as a jurisdiction where such practices persist. Allowing DPRK-linked trade to move without financial interdiction shifts the issue from logistics to financing. That shift marks knowing facilitation.
Sanctions create risk; risk creates premiums; premiums attract brokers. Enforcement discretion becomes leverage across dossiers unrelated to North Korea, from Syria and Libya to relations with Washington, Brussels, Moscow, and Beijing.
Once a NATO state knows its ports, free zones, and licensing desks have enabled DPRK-linked activity and refrains from recalibration, exposure becomes policy.
For front-line states, this compresses DPRK time to capability. North Korea’s weapons programmes advance on a clock defined by procurement cycles, production throughput, and logistical resilience.
Each year in which DPRK networks move goods, components, or funds through Turkey with minimal friction is a year in which the next missile, launcher, or munition reaches operational maturity sooner. Permissive export nodes are part of the guidance system of missiles aimed at capitals. Turkey is one of those nodes.
The urgency is current. In early January 2026, North Korea launched ballistic missiles into the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, prompting condemnation.
Days earlier, additional launches were timed to diplomatic moments. In late December 2025, North Korea announced successful tests of long-range strategic cruise missiles framed as nuclear deterrence demonstrations. Time matters.
This is an Indo-Pacific enforcement problem. The U.S. forward posture, Australia’s AUKUS calculus, Taiwan’s assessment of sanctions survivability, and the interests of maritime Southeast Asia assume that North Korea’s procurement clock is being slowed, not accelerated. When a sanctioned military programme buys time through low-friction nodes, distant permissiveness becomes local risk.
Turkey must be assessed alongside other high-risk hubs for sanctions evasion, including Central Asian transit routes and Russia-linked networks. In the Russian theatre, Turkish exports of sensitive and dual-use goods to Central Asian states surged as direct exports to Russia declined, a rerouting pattern.
Unlike Russia, Turkey performs this role from within NATO, giving DPRK networks political insulation no sanctioned state can replicate. Enforcement behaviour defines risk.
The timing increases the danger. In 2024, Russia blocked the renewal of the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea, removing the primary mechanism for exposing sanctions evasion. Fragmented replacements cannot compensate.
As monitoring weakens, evasion networks adapt faster. In that environment, permissive nodes gain value. Turkey’s industrial capacity, logistics reach, financial depth, and political insulation make it a node that DPRK networks seek as pressure elsewhere increases. A sanctions regime that tolerates a NATO member as a low-friction node has accepted failure at the centre of enforcement.
Western reluctance to confront this is political. Exposing an adversary is easy; confronting a NATO ally’s enabling behaviour is not. A NATO flag does not convert a sanctions evasion corridor into an ally; it makes it a liability. International law is unambiguous.
UN sanctions on North Korea are binding, and arms and luxury goods are core prohibitions. When a NATO state becomes a venue and corridor for such trade, the issue is operational failure with direct regional consequences. In sanctions enforcement, there are no “limited relations”, only low-friction and high-friction environments.
Turkey has chosen the former. That choice demands action: prosecutions, broker investigations, full use of catch-all controls, and cooperation with those exposed to DPRK escalation.
For the Indo-Pacific, the result is concrete. North Korea’s missiles are built from approvals, routes, and licences beyond the Peninsula. As long as Turkey remains a permissive node, Pyongyang’s clock accelerates, each tick time North Korea did not earn, but time others chose to give it.
- Shay Gal is a strategic analyst specialising in international security, foreign policy, and geopolitical crisis management. He advises senior government and defence leaders, with a focus on public diplomacy and strategic communications. He previously served in senior roles at Israel Aerospace Industries, where he worked at the intersection of defence, policy, and international engagement. His work examines power dynamics, hybrid competition, and the institutional and identity forces shaping state decision-making.
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