A US Navy destroyer is tailing a North Korean ship suspected of carrying illicit weapons toward Myanmar in what could be the first test of new UN sanctions against the North over its recent nuclear test, a leading TV network said on Sunday.

The South Korean news network YTN, citing an unidentified intelligence source in the South, said the US suspects the cargo ship Kang Nam is carrying missiles and related parts. Myanmar’s military government, which faces an arms embargo from the US and the EU, has reportedly bought weapons from North Korea. YTN said the US has deployed a destroyer and is using satellites to track the ship, which was expected to travel to Myanmar via Singapore.

South Korea’s Defence Ministry, Unification Ministry and National Intelligence Service said they could not confirm the report. The ship is reportedly the first North Korean vessel to be tracked under the new UN sanctions.

Two US officials said on Thursday that the US military had begun tracking the ship, which left a North Korean port on Wednesday and was traveling off the coast of China. One of the officials said it was uncertain what the ship was carrying, but it had been involved in weapons proliferation before.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have spiked since North Korea conducted its second nuclear explosion on May 25. It later declared it would expand its atomic bomb program and threatened war to protest the UN sanctions imposed in response to its nuclear test. The sanctions toughen an earlier arms embargo against North Korea and authorize ship searches in an attempt to thwart its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

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