How a shifting Nile landscape shaped the rise of the ancient empire of Kush in Sudan When I first became co-director of an archaeological project at Jebel Barkal in northern Sudan in 2018, I was amazed by the site’s pyramids, temples and palaces. It had been an urban center in the ancient empire of Kush, which dominated the Nile Valley off and on for over 2,000 years, from 2000 B.C.E. to 350 C.E.
North Korea isn’t the only country with a shadow fleet. Russia has also amassed hundreds of dark ships to evade sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And Iran is using its shadow fleet to dodge the US blockade on its ports.
But North Korea is the pioneer of this murky world.
The hermit state launched its dark fleet more than a decade ago in response to UN sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile programs. Now, its fleet is believed to include up to 750 vessels, though the exact figure will never be known.
One of us (Justin) has been tracking North Korea’s sanction evasion efforts, including its shadow fleets, for more than a decade. In a partnership between the University of Sydney and the National University of Singapore’s Centre of Maritime Studies, the three of us have also tracked the methods these ships use to obscure their identities and create new methods to try to detect them at sea.
This is the story of one ship in North Korea's fleet, the New Konk.
A shadow ship is born
Before New Konk became, well, New Konk, it was just an ordinary cargo vessel. It was built in 1991 in Japan and operated by South Korean firms, doing unremarkable shipping runs around the world.But by 2019, it had gone dark. The ship was photographed at sea transferring oil to another ship called the Vifine.

The transaction raised alarm bells at the Panel of Experts of the United Nations committee on North Korean sanctions.
Ships that are banned from entering ports because of sanctions often transfer goods at sea, in secret.
New Konk and Vifine were both owned by firms that shared the same address in Hong Kong and were registered the same month. This was no coincidence.
As UN inspectors tracked the ship, New Konk started regularly taking oil from supply ships at sea and that oil would ultimately end up in North Korean ports.
Hiding in plain sight



In October 2019, New Konk stopped using its own IMO and MMSI numbers, and began adopting new identities.
In 2020, for instance, when New Konk was sailing in the East China Sea, it transmitted an MMSI number belonging to another ship called the Mouson 328.
The UN Panel of Experts used satellite imagery to pinpoint a ship with New Konk’s dimensions and shape broadcasting using Mouson 328’s identity