South Korea to check fuel cargoes that reached Russia

South Korea will take legal action if checks show that fuel loaded at its ports and shipped to Russia this summer broke domestic law, the government said.

The warning came on Thursday in a joint statement from three bodies: the foreign ministry, the trade ministry and the customs service. It came after a media report exposed the trade. Officials said they were “checking additional information” and would act under the law if they found any breach.

What the South Korea shipments involved

Its findings rested on tracking data for ships and on records kept by ports. It found that seven tankers loaded over 176,000 tonnes of fuel, mainly diesel, in South Korean ports during July and August. Those tankers then made 14 trips to the far east of Russia. Three of them face sanctions from the UK and the EU.

The Chongchon, one of the sanctioned ships, did not dock at all. It received roughly 26,000 tonnes in a ship-to-ship transfer near Yeosu and later sailed to Vladivostok, despite listing Singapore as its destination. The Layla, also under sanctions, made two runs from Ulsan to Vladivostok with a combined 57,000 tonnes of diesel.

The trade matters because Ukrainian drones have hit Russian refineries hard. According to the International Energy Agency, Russian refining in June sank to its weakest level in over two decades. Diesel production has also dropped by almost 30% from last year. Consequently, Moscow has turned to imported fuel.

Ukraine’s sanctions envoy, Vladyslav Vlasiuk, put the South Korean share of Russian fuel imports in August at 31 per cent. He said the cargoes started “precisely when Ukrainian strikes” were cutting Russian refining.

Seoul says no law broken so far

South Korea said its export controls on Russia do not cover refined fuel. Instead, those rules mostly cover items like cars, electronic goods and machines for industry. On that basis, loading the fuel at South Korean ports broke no domestic law, the statement said.

The government also said it had yet to establish whether any diesel or other fuel made in South Korea ended up in Russia. According to the statement, no diesel, jet fuel or petrol cleared customs as an export to Russia. Who owned or sold the cargo remains unknown, as public port records leave that out.

A change of course on its own, officials cautioned, does not prove that a ship lied about its destination. They will therefore look at the real routes and the reasons behind them before reaching a verdict. All three sanctioned tankers had listed Japan or Singapore as their destination before sailing to Vladivostok.

An analyst at the Finnish thinktank CREA, Isaac Levi, argued that the trade “undermines the sanctions regime.”

The dispute has deepened friction between Seoul and Kyiv. On Wednesday, the South Korean presidential office rejected comments by an adviser to the Ukrainian president as “contrary to fact and inappropriate.” Kyiv, for its part, said it had asked Seoul for an explanation in private diplomatic talks. Ties were already strained by the handover of two captured North Korean soldiers, a move Seoul insists should have stayed confidential.