Just a few weeks into the war, one of the Persian Gulf’s top oil producers quietly began sneaking its crude out of the Strait of Hormuz.

Ga-Hyun Chung, an intensely private Korean shipping tycoon, rocked the tanker industry early this year as his Sinokor Group embarked on an unprecedented buying spree.

The UAE’s covert project using the South Korean shipping magnate’s tankers is so successful it is already approaching its pre-war rate of flows of oil.