North Korea Has a Meth Problem, Part 3
North Korea’s meth problem continues to worsen as meth gains cultural acceptance.
According to interviews with residents of Heoryong and Musan, in North Hamkyung Province on February 5, North Koreans near the border area and Shin-ui-ju, Hamheung, and Pyongyang consume Crystal Meth like food.
Especially near the border area, Meth is used by people of all ages, and even students aged 14-15 consume it. In these regions, Meth is served for guests, and the host invite guests to consume Meth by saying “Well, let’s drink!” Adults do not hesitate to invite children to consume Meth, which is resulting in addiction and drug related crime. Children often steal in order to afford their consumption.
Even field-grade officers in the border guards are involved in smuggling and selling drugs:
On January 30, a source in North Hamkyung Province reported that the delivery of drugs between Onsung, North Hamkyung Province into China is done by the border guards on the level of lieutenant and lieutenant kernels.
These border guards deliver drugs produced in North Korea across the Tumen River whenever they are patrolling the river. After a basic check-up on the quality of drugs, the buyers come across to North Korea and pay them. Since crossing the river is frequent in the duties of the border guards, Chinese government does not consider this to be suspicious.
The amount of drug being delivered is between 1kg to 5-6 kg. The price is $17,000-18,000 for 1 kg, and the border guards take $2-3,000.
The involvement of the soldiers is not limited to the delivery. They sometimes sell the drugs themselves. They at times take the drugs that they confiscated and sell them to those they already know in China. This is sold at a below-average price, which makes it popular.
The Daily NK has also published photographs of North Korean soldiers smuggling.
I’ve previously written about North Korea’s meth problem here and here, and I suspect this is one of the main “sleeper” challenges to post-Kim reconstruction. I’ve also followed reports of corruption and low morale in the border guard force. According to a rash of such reports in 2007, the government sentenced two to death for taking bribes. In response, 20 more dropped their guns, deserted, and crossed the border into China. Of these, two were later interviewed on Japanese television. Ten of the guards were reportedly recaptured.
On the whole, the meth problem is a tremendously destructive development for North Korean society. It’s going to be difficult to rebuild a tiger economy on the ashes of what Kim Jong Il has gutted with a bunch of tweaks — think Yemen, where everyone is stoned on kat all day, or if you prefer, Barstow, California. But the silver lining is that if the border guards are corrupt enough to smuggle drugs, they can be paid to smuggle food, medicine, and eventually, weapons.
I’ve been concerned about this for some time. I first started reading reports of this back in the mid-1990s, I think. (South Korea and Taiwan used to be major exporters of meth back in the 1980s and even in to the 1990s, I think, and it looked like North Korea was following their business idea.)
This bodes very badly for a post-unification Korea (or even just a post-KJI Korea). The US, South Korea, Japan, and other countries afflicted with high rates of meth addiction need to be dealing with this now, including working on a medical regimen to get people detoxified. In the end, that might be the cheapest route.
Pardon my French, but meth just fu¢ks people up. The damage is physical, mental, and emotional. And they in turn screw things up for people around them — family members, friends, and neighbors. In my parents upper-middle-class Orange County neighborhood, the boyfriend of the neighbor’s granddaughter effectively took over the octogenarian’s home and turned the garage into a meth lab. People going in and out of there were later arrested for stealing mail throughout the neighborhood for credit card theft and identity theft purposes, and they also stole my father’s Toyota and stripped it clean of anything of value. At least they had the courtesy to not stab or shoot anyone for anything (as far as we know), mostly hitting people when they weren’t home.
It is becoming more and more serious in the US, where meth is poised to do to rural White America what crack did to urban Black America in the 1980s.
I’ve always wondered if it was drugs that caused hopelessness or if hopelessness caused drugs. That is, if the lack of economic freedom in places throughout the US and North Korea is what really led people to drug habits.