HONG KONG (Yonhap) -- Hong Kong-based North Korean agents have sold military technologies to other countries, using foreign passports to hide their identities, a media report here said Wednesday.
Citing Japanese human rights activist Ken Kato, Hong Kong's English-daily South China Morning Post reported two North Koreans ran a company called New East International Trading Ltd. in China's special administrative region.
The company, which was deregistered in 2009, was reported to have illegally shipped military technology to Myanmar.
It was run by Chol Han and Ju Ok-hui, who were identified in 2004 as holding North Korean passports.
By 2008, however, the two men were listed in the Hong Kong registry as having passports from the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, some 1,500 kilometers east of the African continent.
Currently, the pair hold passports issued by Kiribati, an island nation located in the central tropical Pacific Ocean, the report said.
The Japanese researcher speculated that Chol and Ju have likely started business anew in another city, and left Hong Kong, the report said.
The South China Morning Post said dozens of small private firms in Hong Kong are known to have had business dealings with North Korean partners in recent years, with North Korean-linked ships having long been occasional visitors to the Chinese territory. (Yonhap)