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Category: Drugs & N Korea

August 5, 2008

N. Korean Defectors Escape Severe Malnutrition Only to Acquire “Chronic” Case of Munchies

Just when I think I’ve seen everything …. Two North Korean defectors living in Britain were jailed after they were caught working at a secret cannabis farm, a U.S. broadcaster reported Saturday. Radio Free Asia (RFA), monitored in Seoul, said a Liverpool court sentenced this week the North Korean men — who lived in the country under refugee status — to jail terms, after they were arrested in March during a police raid of a cannabis farm in Southport, a...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Refugees/WTF?
March 13, 2008

“On the Border”

Today, on Capitol Hill, I had a chance to see an excerpt of that Chosun Ilbo documentary on human trafficking in North Korea. As my friend had said, it does indeed depict drug smuggling. One smuggler is actually interviewed on night vision, just as he emerges from the freezing Tumen River with a load of drugs he is smuggling into China. His source? His brother, a soldier, who is pilfering from a state pharmaceutical factory in Nampo. I wasn’t able...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Human Trafficking/Media Criticism
March 5, 2008

Chosun Ilbo Produces Four-Part Documentary on N. Korean Refugees

[Update: OK, that TBS network that’s showing this series turns out not to be this one, but a Japanese network. I’ll let you know about U.S. broadcast times when I hear more.] Yesterday, I wrote about a disturbing economic trend in North Korea that I hadn’t known previously — the regime’s practice of lending food at usurious interest rates. The original report from Good Friends doesn’t specifically say what the penalty for non-payment is, but it must be starvation or...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Human Trafficking/Refugees
March 5, 2008

North Korea Has a Meth Problem, Part 2

After I wrote here recently about North Korea’s growing meth problem, it occurred to me that I never talked about how, as a prosecutor, I learned how awful meth really is. I spent just shy of two years of my Army time assigned to Ft. Irwin, California, home of the OPFOR. During most of that time, I was the prosecutor, or Trial Counsel. Irwin is a great place to drive a T-72, shoot AK’s, or go out on field exercises...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Korean Society/UCMJ & SOFA
March 2, 2008

North Korea Has a Meth Problem

North Korea’s government has long been suspected of producing illicit drugs for export. In 2003,  a high-level defector testified that the goverment is deeply involved in producing and exporting opiates,  including heroin, and amphetamines. North Korea’s official ideology, really “crude, race-based nationalism” thinly veiled in socialism, would have had no problem justifying the poisoning of Japanese and Australian kids, but it was just a matter of time before North Korean drugs found their way into North Korean society. Until recently,...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Inside NK/Regime Change
September 20, 2007

We must be smoking what they’re growing

North Korea was dropped from the U.S. list of countries producing illicit drugs, a sign of further relief of tensions between the two countries. “North Korea is not affecting the United States as much as the requirements on the list,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Christy McCampbell said on Sept. 17 in Washington, according to a transcript of her speech on the State Department Web site.  [Bloomberg] And that decision is based on what?  On  absolutely nothing but the interests...
Categories Appeasement/Axis of Evil/Drugs & N Korea/Six-Party Talks
June 7, 2007

True, But Would It Sell Papers?

At the Marmot’s Hole, R. Elgin notes that the Korean press is trying to  make foreigners the scapegoats for  South Korea’s drug problems.  I agree with R. Elgin.  The article notes a “huge increase” in drug smuggling into Korea, and then proceeds  to  indirectly blame Americans, Canadians, and Chinese for it.  Prosecutors believe the rising number of American drug offenders correlates to a rising number of English teachers coming to Korea, prompted by the recent trend for English education. The...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Korean Society/Media Criticism
May 2, 2007

Anju Links for 2 May 2007: North Korea Denies Abducting Any S. Koreans, May Day in Kaesong, and North Koreans’ Growing Meth Problem

*   It has now been 18 days since North Korea violated all of  the denuclearization commitments to which it agreed last February.   I blame  Bill Richardson, who obviously must have said something tactless and belligerent while being led around the deck of the U.S.S. Pueblo.   It’s time for us to get serious about diplomacy and  offer some carrots.   How many of our soldiers’ lives is Catalina Island really worth?   How many times must the canonballs fly, Bill? *  ...
Categories Anju Links/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Geopolitics/Human Trafficking/Inside NK/Six-Party Talks
April 23, 2007

Anju Links for 23 April 2007

*   The Ides of April.   I’ve previously blogged about the replacement of Premier  Pak Pong Ju with Kim Yong Il.  Now, we learn that Kim Kyok-Sik is taking over as the new “military first,” to borrow a tired  expression,  which technically makes him second only to Korigula himself (ht: Richardson).  Two other old party hacks have gone off to that Eternal Party Congress chaired by Mephistopheles himself, or soon will:  Foreign Minister  Paek Nam-Sun  and Marshall Cho Myong-Rok.  All...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Korean Society/Kremlinology/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks/Southeast Asia/Uncategorized/WMD
March 19, 2007

Anju Links for 3/19

*    Radio Megumi.  An international body has granted Japan  permission to increase broadcasts into North Korea.  The broadcasts will be directed  at a small audience:  its abducted citizens.  I tend to think that Japan would see them home again sooner if it broadcast words of dissent and subversion to the North Korean people. *   Short-Selling Appeasement.   Japan now stands alone in standing up to the North Koreans in Beijing:  not one Yen until you give us back...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Japan & Korea/Media Criticism/NK Economics/Terrorism/Iraq
February 28, 2007

Daily NK: Hoeryong Party Official Caught Dealing Dope

As with a lot of the more chaotic stories lately, it comes from Hoeryong: In an interview on the 24th, the source from Hoiryeong said “On Feb 24, 20 or so officials from the National Security Agency made a search warrant in the home (#42, Sanup-dong, Hoiryeong) of Suh Kyung Hee (49) Chairwoman of Hoiryeong City’s North Korean Democratic Women’s Union. On location, they found 15kg of drugs known as “ice,” US$30,000 and approx. 200,000 North Korean won (approx. US...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Inside NK
January 18, 2007

Caught on Tape: Drug Smuggling in North Korea

The footage also captured the North Korean drug dealers sniffing the drugs as well as the dealers talking about the transaction. Of the dealers, one person was a worker managing the level of humidity at a manufacturing factory and seemingly the intermediary supplier who obtained the drugs. It seems that the 3~4 people sitting in a circle are personally testing the quality of the drugs before purchase. Although the dealer’s child has entered the room, the buyers continue to inhale...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Inside NK
November 6, 2006

Got Meth?

Recently,  Robert Koehler  blogged about the North Korean drug ship that was repeatedly caught in Busan, only to be left to go and make the same haul again.  It’s only the latest example of the South Korean government putting the interests of Bureau 39 ahead of the interests of ordinary Korean citizens in either the North or the South.  Now, however, media exposure has embarrassed Roh’s government into the most limp-wristed  action  they could get away with — actually inspecting...
Categories Appeasement/Drugs & N Korea
November 2, 2006

North Korea Wants Its Drug Money Back

[Update:  A senior Korean official suggests that the U.S. will do just that right after the talks resume.  Scroll down.] [Update 2:  The Washington Post post also suspects that North Korea’s announcement is merely an effort to foil the American economic pressure: We hope Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, who conducted lengthy talks with his North Korean counterpart in recent days, is justified in expecting “substantial progress” from the new round. But history suggests that both North Korea...
Categories "United" Nations/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Famine & Food Aid/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks
October 15, 2006

U.N.S.C.R. 1718: Who Won, Who Lost (Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 13)

John Bolton: Winner. I’d like to hear John Bolton’s critics deny that, as with Resolution 1695, he has wrung far more effectiveness from the U.N. than we had come to expect. Not only should we confirm this man, pronto, we should clone him. Madeleine Albright never got results like these. The United States: Winner. We got everything we really wanted here: help constricting Kim Jong Il’s financial arteries the right to search his ships and planes. an embargo on the...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Geopolitics/Japan/Japan & Korea/Money Laundering/U.S. & Korea/WMD
September 5, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 8

Nigel Cowie, North Korea’s most “legitimate” banker, is selling out, and this time, that’s not just a moral judgment. Richardson links this piece, written by none other than Bradley K. Martin, indicating that he’s selling his Daedong Credit Bank to the British-based Koryo Group, but will stay on to help manage the bank. As for the issue of Daedong’s much-proclaimed legitimacy, Martin adds what strikes me as a highly salient fact: The minority owner of Daedong Credit is Korea Daesong...
Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Money Laundering/NK Economics/WMD
August 29, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 6

From the AP: The financial noose is tightening around North Korea as international banks sever ties with the nation – a move championed by the United States, a top Treasury Department official says. [….] “There is sort of a voluntary coalition of financial institutions saying that they don’t want to handle this business anymore and that is causing financial isolation for the government of North Korea,” Stuart Levey, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in an...
Categories Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Money Laundering/NK Economics
August 23, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 5

Stuart Levey’s visit to Asia last month is paying off. Yet another nation is cutting off Kim Jong Il’s finances. Vietnamese banks have already closed down North Korean accounts over the past few weeks, most likely forcing Pyongyang to move its money to its last remaining haven, Russia, said Peter Beck, head of the International Crisis Group’s Seoul office, on Tuesday. Beck said Nigel Cowie, general manager of North Korea’s Daedong Credit Bank in Pyongyang, e-mailed him last week and...
Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/NK Economics