I hope Taiwanese aren’t profiting from oil sent to North Korea. Very disappointing if it is.
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I would guess this is the Chinese using Taiwan/HK as a cover.
I hope that is what we find out.
The Chinese and the Russians are selling oil to North Korea.
I understand that part. It does look like there is Taiwanese investment. If it is true, I expect the Taiwanese government to make an example out of them.
. The other 29 examples all Taiwanese ?
I disagree. Getting good relationship with any nation that is sanctioned works for Taiwan’s own interest. What could be in it for Taiwan from North Korea? North Korea would give Taiwan a storage site for the nuclear waste. That is probably the more likely reason for the South Korean Navy to check the Taiwanese vessel.
No waythe Taiwanese government would dare to do this.
As to whether a Taiwanese company was involved, my short version is, I don’t know.
Here’s my tl;dr version:
This site says Lighthouse Winmore flies a Hong Kong flag and is home-ported in Hong Kong:
But the site linked above doesn’t seem to tell who the owner is (at least not for free).
This site says pretty much the same thing, and also doesn’t give the name of the ship’s owner:
This site gives a little more information. It says the ship was built in Yinxing Shipyard, in Jiujiang, China, and says that the owner is Win More Shipping of Hong Kong, and that the manager is Lighthouse Shipmanagement (sic) of Guangzhou (Canton):
http://maritime-connector.com/ship/lighthouse-win-more-9635987/
I’m ignorant of this sort of thing, so don’t know firsthand what role a manager plays.
You can see four Chinese characters on the hull of the ship, both on the stern and on the bow. Here’s the stern:
The four characters are 方向永嘉, or in pinyin, Fāngxiàng Yǒngjiā, according to Google Translate.
If I paste “方向永嘉” into Google, this United Daily News article is among the results:
https://udn.com/news/story/11311/2903132
This is an excerpt from the article:
香港媒體調查發現，「方向永嘉」隸屬在香港註冊的「永嘉船務有限公司」，成立於二○一三年，唯一董事及股東是一名叫做龔銳強的廣州人，公司地址位於灣仔。龔某在大陸投資多家船務公司，在英屬維京群島有公司登記。
According to Google Translate, the above text indicates that a “Hong Kong media investigation” revealed that the ship belongs to “Yongjia Shipping Co., Ltd.,” is a man named Gong Ruiqiang, of Guangzhou (Canton).
That having been said, I’m somewhat confused, because there are articles that speak of allegations that the ship in question is affiliated with an alleged Taiwanese company called the Billions Bunker Group, apparently based in the Marshall Islands. Here’s an article that seems to say that the ship was being rented by 比利恩油品集團, which I guess is the same name as Billions Bunker Group, but the article also says that the Presidential Palace says that this company is not a Taiwan company:
In an almost-bare entry, the Bloomberg site says that Billions Bunker Group is Taiwanese:
To make things more confusing, there is an informational site, apparently not involved in this controversy, that does say that the Billions Bunker Group is Taiwanese, but that it owns a ship named MV Billions No.88, which is a different name from that of the ship in question:
To recapitulate, I don’t know.
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Articles I’ve read says that the ship was chartered by Billions Bunker group, not owned by them.
I’m wondering if this Taiwanese company is a shell company owned by pro-Beijing Taiwanese, using Taiwan’s status as a US ally to deflect suspicion.
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The three articles linked below seem to add some interesting information. I don’t know Chinese, so I don’t think I can do them justice.
http://findbiz.nat.gov.tw turns up 222 results for 永嘉 (and 20 for 嘉永) but zero for 永嘉船務 (also zero for 嘉永船務).
There are 4 hits for 比例恩, but they don’t seem to be related.
Btw should we really be shocked by this?
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Thanks for going to all that trouble, yyy. I couldn’t get much from Google by searching those characters, except what was already in news reports.
I didn’t know that, or if I did, my old brain lost it.
I found two Google Caches of two no-longer-existing 1111.com.tw job ads, for the two Kaohsiung companies mentioned in the articles in the post above yours.
One of the aforementioned Kaohsiung entities is called 盈財海洋企業股份有限公司, which Google Translate translates as Yingcai Ocean Enterprise Co., Ltd. In Yingcai’s cached ad, the following text is to the right of Yingcai’s name:
(高雄)( 比利恩油品集團 )
比利恩油品集團 (pinyin Bǐlìēn Yóupǐn Jítuán) is apparently the name of the entity mentioned somewhere in the media as having rented the Lighthouse Winmore, and 比利恩油品集團 is also the name of the entity said somewhere in the media to be registered in the Marshall Islands (if Billions Bunker Group and 比利恩油品集團 are the same entity).
Here’s the cached Yingcai ad:
The cached Yingcai ad contains a link to an information page about Yingcai on the MOEA’s Department of Commerce Industrial Services Portal website. According to that information page, Yingcai was dissolved in November.
The other aforementioned Kaohsiung entity is called 高洋漁業股份有限公司, which I guess could be translated as Gaoyang Fisheries Co., Ltd. In Gaoyang’s cached ad, the following text is to the right of Gaoyang’s name:
( 比利恩油品集團.聯海船務集團 )
I can’t make out the significance of 聯海船務集團, above, but the other set of characters, 比利恩油品集團, again, is apparently the name of the entity mentioned in the media as having rented the Lighthouse Winmore.
Here’s the cached Gaoyang ad:
The cached Gaoyang ad also contains a link to an information page about Gaoyang on the MOEA’s Department of Commerce Industrial Services Portal website. According to that information page, Gaoyang is still in existence.
No trouble, really. 
Looks like Russia is also still supplying . It does seem to me , as the Dear Leader begins to see that China/Russia will have to be 'seen" to stop this, which will start to really affect N.K., he has softened his stance on not talking with the South. I hope this means a step forward.
So, sanctions seem to be having the desired effect then?
Don’t blame me, I live next to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa and i really don’t want to have a Kim-bomb land on my house.
And the issue has hit a very traditional end:
he knew what he was getting into when dealing in oil AND with North Korea.
Yep, case closed, nothing to see here, move on.
Ah, of course. Totally.