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March 23, 2017

WSJ: Feds may indict North Koreans in Bangladesh Bank fraud

This story just gets more interesting by the day: Federal prosecutors are building cases that would accuse North Korea of directing one of the biggest bank robberies of modern times, the theft of $81 million from Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last year, according to people familiar with the matter. The charges, if filed, would target alleged Chinese middlemen who prosecutors believe helped North Korea orchestrate the theft, the people said. The current cases being pursued...
Categories Cyberwar/NK Crime/U.S. Law
March 22, 2017

Top NSA official attributes attempted $1B bank heist to North Korean hackers

The story of the Bangladesh Bank/SWIFT heist has gotten much more interesting of late. Now, not only do we have a senior U.S. intelligence official attributing it to a government, we learn that the North Koreans tried to steal nearly …. A senior National Security Agency official appeared to confirm that North Korean computer hackers were behind a multi-million dollar heist targeting Bangladesh’s central bank last year. Computer hackers attempted to steal $951 million, but only got away with $81 million, some of which...
Categories Cyberwar/NK Crime/Terrorism (NK)
March 16, 2017

N. Korea, Lazarus & SWIFT: Are the white hats closing in? (Update: SWIFT cuts off remaining N. Korean banks)

In the last month, major news stories about North Korea have bombarded my batting cage faster than I’ve been able to swing at them. I’d wondered when I’d have a chance to cover Katy Burne’s detailed story in the Wall Street Journal about the empty half of the SWIFT glass ” that despite its recent decision to disconnect three U.N.-designated North Korean banks, it’s still messaging for banks that are sanctioned by the Treasury Department, but not by the U.N.:...
Categories Cyberwar/Money Laundering/NK Crime/U.S. Law
August 18, 2016

North Korean diplomats behaving badly, Part 2

On balance, I suppose Kim Jong-un probably prefers to see his foreign emissaries expelled than boarding KAL flights to Seoul. Still, since we last took inventory of Pyongyang’s distressed diplomatic corps in March, several more North Korean diplomats have been kicked out and sent home, and His Corpulency is apparently displeased.  Pakistan In 2014, I wrote about North Koreans who were bootlegging alcohol in Muslim countries, quite possibly the only illicit North Korean activity that also provides a useful service to...
Categories NK Crime/Sanctions
May 27, 2016

Global wave of bank burglaries should revive calls to kick N. Korea out of SWIFT

In recent weeks, I’ve watched with keen interest, and some schadenfreude, as news reports have implicated Pakistani and North Korean hackers in a series of massive bank burglaries involving as many as 12 banks around the world, starting with the theft of $81 million (or $101 million, depending on which report you believe) from the Bangladesh Bank’s account in the U.S. Federal Reserve. These burglaries did not involve guns or ski masks. They were something more like armored car burglaries, but...
Categories Money Laundering/NK Crime/Sanctions
March 23, 2016

North Korean diplomats behaving badly

If you’re a North Korean diplomat, a good general rule is that all publicity is bad publicity. Over the last two weeks, North Koreans, most of them diplomats or former diplomats, have attracted much publicity of the kind they couldn’t have wanted. The Chinese government reports that “a North Korean consular official” killed two Chinese citizens while driving home drunk in Dandong last month. The North Korean diplomat was on his way home from an “event celebrating North Korea’s launch...
Categories Diplomacy/Money Laundering/NK Crime/Sanctions
August 3, 2015

In North Korea, prostitution used to be a survival strategy. Now, it’s just another racket.

The Great Famine of the 1990s changed North Korean society so profoundly that we are still trying to understand the breadth and depth of that change. During and after the famine, millions of North Koreans grasped at any survival strategy necessary to feed themselves. Those who did not change, and whom the state did not feed, died. For thousands of North Korean women, prostitution was the survival strategy of last resort to feed themselves, and often, their children. In Kim Il Sung’s North Korea, the sex trade was invisible to the...
Categories Capitalism/Human Trafficking/NK Crime
September 16, 2014

MUST READ: WSJ on Bureau 39 and North Korean money laundering, post-BDA

The Obama Administration has never talked much, or done much, about North Korean money laundering. There is a tendency to assume that a problem that isn’t discussed isn’t a problem at all, but The Wall Street Journal‘s Alastair Gale has just interviewed some senior defectors with inside knowledge of North Korea’s money laundering, and the product of those interviews was some outstanding reporting. Gale’s interviews confirm the continued importance of Bureau 39 to North Korea’s regime, and that it continues to engage in...
Categories Money Laundering/NK Crime/Sanctions
August 5, 2010

Plan B Watch: Einhorn Goes to Tokyo, Pressure Builds on China

The latest reports in the Korean press tell us that the President will soon sign an over-arching executive order that will subsume the authorities of Executive Order 13,382 (see sidebars), and will also allow the blocking of assets used for proliferation, drug trafficking, and currency counterfeiting: In a press briefing on Monday, Department spokesman Philip Crowley said, “We have no doubt that North Korea has engaged directly in counterfeit operations as a means of bringing currency into the country. This...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Crime/NK Economics/Proliferation/Sanctions
July 7, 2010

Prostitution Said to Be Widespread in Chongjin

Next time one of North Korea’s apologists speaks of its pristine moral vales, gender equality, or absence of sexist billboards, someone remind me to point them to this: “The prostitution of teenage females is rampant, which has forced the security services of Chongjin to dispatch plain-clothed security officers to the station to crackdown on it. But the cleverly disguised prostitution of female university students is increasing, and some of them have close relationships with the same security officials who are...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Crime
July 2, 2010

1 July 2010

Congratulations to Barbara Demick, whose wonderful book, “Nothing to Envy,” has just won Britain’s Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. _______________________ Closets Are for Clothes! Yonhap: “N. Korean leader makes robust outings amid tension with S. Korea” _______________________ The aid NGO Caritas claims that North Koreans will suffer from donor fatigue. I think donor fatigue has afflicted me, too. I’d long been a supporter of monitored food aid, but I’ve coe to doubt that Kim Jong Il will ever allow monitoring...
Categories Anju Links/NK Crime
November 21, 2009

More North Korean Diplomats Busted for Smuggling

Not a day goes by that I don’t rue all of the commerce we’re missing out on by not having diplomatic relations with North Korea: Swedish police have arrested two North Korean diplomats on suspicion of smuggling 230,000 cigarettes into the Nordic country, the Swedish Customs Office said Friday. The pair, a man and a woman who have diplomatic status in Russia, were stopped by Swedish customs officers Wednesday morning as they drove off a ferry from Helsinki, the Finnish...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/NK Crime
June 28, 2009

A North Korean Connection to Those Counterfeit Bonds?

It’s very short on specifics, but it’s the first published report affirmatively linking those fake bonds to North Korea: An Italian newspaper reports a recent mysterious case involving US$134.5 billion worth of counterfeit bonds has a North Korea connection. Earlier this month two Japanese nationals were caught in Italy allegedly trying to smuggle the bonds into Switzerland. Il Messaggero says the fake bonds may have been manufactured in North Korea since the two men are North Korean agents and are...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Crime/Sanctions
June 18, 2009

WaPo on North Korea’s Global Insurance Scam

For Kim Jong Il’s birthday, North Korean insurance managers prepared a special gift. In Singapore, they stuffed $20 million in cash into two heavy-duty bags and sent them, via Beijing, to their leader in Pyongyang, said Kim Kwang Jin, who worked as a manager for Korea National Insurance Corp., a state-owned monopoly. Kim said he helped arrange the shipment and watched in February 2003 as the cash was packed. After the money arrived, Kim Jong Il sent a letter of...
Categories NK Crime/NK Economics
June 5, 2009

Obama Gears Up for “Plan B;” John Kerry Blocks Terror Re-Listing

I really don’t know what to make of this.  A young, inexperienced president, one whom the North Koreans arguably endorsed, comes into office showing every sign of being easier meat than Lance Bass in Riker’s Island.  The North Koreans, true to Joe Biden’s prophetic gaffe, and with their exquisite sensitivity to American weakness, don’t even let the man get inaugurated before they begin the noisy repudiation of every agreed framework, U.N. resolution, and armistice they can stuff into a shredder....
Categories "United" Nations/China/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Crime/NK Economics/Proliferation/Sanctions/U.S. Politics
December 11, 2008

That’s Going to Buy a Lot of Cognac for Someone (Updated 7/2009)

How likely a story does this sound to you? The accident took place in April 2005 when, it is claimed, a helicopter owned by Air Koryo, the North Korean state airline, was dispatched from Pyongyang, the capital, to collect a woman who was in labour with triplets from a remote island. On the return flight it crashed into a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, causing a fire that destroyed a large amount of humanitarian relief goods. [Times of...
Categories NK Crime
August 16, 2008

Second N. Korean Disqualified for Doping

Earlier, I reported that North Korean pistol-shooter Kim Jong-Su had been stripped of two medals,  one silver and  one bronze, for doping.  The banned drugs Kim took were beta-blockers, which suppress anxiety that  can make a shooter jittery.  Now, a second North Korean shooter, Kim Hyon-Ung, has been disqualified: “Kim Hyon-Ung was barred from participating in the Games after it became known belatedly that he failed a doping test carried out during the Asian championships,” the official said. “North Korean...
Categories NK Crime