XPost: can.politics, alt.true-crime, alt.drugs.hard
From: gregpcarr@yahoo.ca

Drugs, counterfeiting: How North Korea survives on proceeds of crime

Military officials, diplomats play role in criminal ventures, analysts
say


Mark Gollom · CBC News · 10 hours ago

Kim Jong-un's regime in North Korea is partly funded by a variety of
criminal activities, experts say. (Wong Maye-E/Associated Press)
When North Korea testedwhat it claimed was a new intercontinental
ballistic missile last week, the regime certainly wanted to flex its
military might for the world, and in particular the United States.
But it may have had another purpose in mind — it may have been looking
to make a sale.
"This is not just a threat. This is to make money," said Bruce
Bechtol, professor of political science at Angelo State University in
Texas.
And one way the regime makes money is through proliferation — the
proliferation of weapons, as well as technical assistance and military
training for its clients in the Middle East and Africa.
"You can assume with high probability that that [type of] missile is
going to Iran for a very high price," said Bechtol, who served as a
senior Northeast Asia analyst in the Pentagon.
Proliferation is just part of the regime's vast criminal enterprises —
illicit activities that experts say account for a significant portion
of the North Korean economy.
"Their money is typically generated through a myriad of illegal
activities that the embassies around the world are sanctioned to
engage in," said David Asher, former special co-ordinator of the U.S.
State Department's North Korea working group.

North Korea's nuclear weapons program is about flexing its muscle internationally — and making money, analysts tell CBC. (Associated
Press)
Those activities include illegal drug manufacturing and trafficking of
cocaine, heroin and high-grade methamphetamine. He said the regime is
also heavily involved in the production of counterfeit pharmaceuticals
and synthetic narcotics, including fentanyl, which can be found on the
streets in the U.S. and Canada.
"They produce a huge amount of counterfeit Viagra, which is a big
problem for Pfizer," Asher said.
The government also reaps funds from currency and cigarette
counterfeiting, he said, and trading in banned products like rhino
horns and illicitminerals such as conflict diamonds.
'Nationalized crime'
This isn't a case where the government has turned a blind eye to
criminal activities or taking kickbacks from criminals. Experts say
the regime itself sanctions and is involved in the criminal
enterprises.
"The best way to think about it is kind of like a Sopranos state, like
a Mafia state or Mafia country," said Paul Rexton Kan, an associate
professor of national security studies at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.
"They sort of nationalized crime and they've industrialized it, and
now they sort of weaponized it as well," he said. "It is sort of one
whole state that is dedicated to organized criminal activities as a
way to fund the regime, fund their programs."
This government bureaucracy focused on pursuing illegal activities for
profit began under Kim Il-sung, the nation's founder, Kan said. Much
of the information about these schemes comes from former government
officials who have defected.
Many of the schemes are run out of "Central Committee Bureau 39" of
the Korean Workers Party, he said, which enlists military officials, bureaucrats and members of the diplomatic corps to organize and
participate in the manufacture and distribution of criminal goods.

Paul Rexton Kan, an associate professor of national security studies
at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., says the North Korean
military plays a role in the regime's illicit money-making schemes.
(Jon Chol Jin/Associated Press)
The North Korean military, for example, will work with criminal
organizations like the Japanese Yakuza or Malaysian organized crime to distribute drugs internationally, Kan said.
The government will also use its diplomatic corps to collect proceeds
from these activities and deposit them in various banks where they're
posted, he said. Many diplomats, in fact, are sent overseas for that
specific reason — to launder money and send proceeds from their
criminal enterprises back to the regime, he said.
"It's criminal entrepreneurship at its best."
So does this make Kim Jong-un a pseudo Mafia don?
"Oh, he's the don, but he's the all-powerful don," said Balbina Hwang,
former U.S. State Department adviser and member of the National
Committee on North Korea, a non-governmental organization of experts.
"And should anybody attempt to cross him, just as ruthless if not more
than any of these Mafia or drug cartel dons."
While other governments around the world are certainly corrupt, North
Korea is unique in that many schemes are completely directed,
channelled and controlled by the state, said Hwang.
How much North Korea profits from such activities is difficult to
determine because it's such a closed society. Kan estimates the
government has raked in billions.
No 'imminent signs of collapse'
Whatever the figure, illegal revenue is certainly the reason the
regime has managed to survive economically despite a series of
international economic sanctions, analysts say.
"And I do not believe there are any imminent signs of collapse," Hwang
said.
"North Korea does know how to efficiently earn money. It's very
unfortunate that the most efficient way that it knows how to do that
is illegally."
U.S. plans extra sanctions against North Korea
Why solid intelligence on North Korea is so hard to get
In the early 2000s, for example, the U.S. government dubbed North
Korea's counterfeit U.S. $100 bills "supernotes," and the U.S.
Treasury was forced to change its currency and come up with
specialized paper and holographic images.
Hwang said the Trump administration's recent announcement that it will
put North Korea back on the list of countries that are state sponsors
of terrorism gives the U.S. greater licence to target the regime's
illegal cash flow.
"That designation then allows the U.S. government and all its various
agencies to start to go after specific North Korean activities ...
that it would otherwise not have been able to do." =======================================================
A freind of a HAMC freind tells me that North Korea sells a lot of
hashish and there is stuff on the WWW to back this up.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/north-korea-criminal-empire-drugs-trafficking-1.4435265

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