Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 2
During Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levy’s recent visit to a series of Asian nations, I wondered just how Treasury’s green eyeshades had landed on a particular series of bank accounts that attracted his attention. Via a U.S. Treasury official who spoke with the Donga Ilbo, we now know that the answer is linked to the first two questions I asked after the mass arrests that came of Operation Smoking Dragon last August:
1. Were any North Korean nationals caught or implicated?
2. Were other branches of the same organization operating in third countries? What countries?
Now we learn:
“It is true that some North Korean were among the arrested 87. However, they will not be punished because they cooperated with the investigation.
That’s fairly earth-shaking, and it would suggest that the North Koreans are under the protection of the U.S. government, since they must have known when they talked that they wouldn’t have much of a chance back in North Korea.
One of the stops on Undersecretary Levy’s itinerary was Singapore, where government officials then held some curious meetings with North Korean Foreign Minister Baek Nam Soon:
At the time, the South Korean government explained, “Minister Baek stopped by Singapore for kidney dialysis. It wasn’t for any particular reason. Nevertheless, on his journey back home, Minister Back spent three days, from August 1 to 3, in Singapore, meeting with Singapore government officials.
When asked by Dong-A Ilbo if Minister Baek’s stay in Singapore was related to O Bank, the U.S. government official answered, “Don’t you think that it would be logical to think so?”
From this, I infer that while in Singapore, Levy fired a shot over the bow of one bank that appears not to have responded constructively to polite requests:
Recently, a source in Washington D.C. said, “With the American administration raising its pressure on North Korea’s funds in Macao, North Korea attempted to change its bank to Singapore, and the new haven is known as a small bank referred to as O Bank.
On August 3, a U.S. government official also said in an interview with Dong-A Ilbo, “O Bank is a problem bank. This bank is on the list of banks related to North Korea, which the U.S. government keeps a close eye on. With the U.S. tracing its funds, North Korea tried to disperse them, and by the official’s statement it was officially confirmed that Singapore, an international finance city, has become one of the safe havens.
Given the effect that this kind of attention had on Banco Delta Asia last year, I would expect that O Bank would rapidly issue a denial, along with promises of cooperation. I’d also expect it to show up in Singaporean newspapers for having attracted the wrong kind of attention from its depositors. Neither event has occurred so far, and it’s interesting that O Bank doesn’t even have a Web site. Stay tuned.
Postscript: Even in South Korea, home of Kim Jong Il’s last unrepentant financial backers, the mood is souring. The number of South Korean tourists who visited the Kumgang Resort in North Korea last month fell by 43%. That can’t be helpful to a project that’s consistently struggled to show a profit.