North Korea’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) set up cover companies to smuggle heroin and methamphetamines into neighboring countries including China, Japan and Vietnam.

Why narcotics?

North Korea has a long history of narcotics production and export. The country began producing synthetic methamphetamines in North Pyongyang and South Hamyong provinces in the mid 1990’s as an appetite suppressant during famine. The drug was also given to workers to speed up labor on construction sites. Having developed a local industry for the addictive stimulant, the regime quickly realized that it could be a good source of foreign exchange.

Cover companies and use of diplomats

Research by PP has found that from the mid 1990’s one of the main vehicles for the DPRK’s narcotics trade was a Pyongyang front company called Sujong Joint Venture Co. On the surface, Sujong was a harmless trading entity that exported mineral water and imported computers. In reality, Sujong was a government-owned cover company for smuggling narcotics. The organization was also known as the Crystal Trade Company (“Crystal” …. subtle right!). Sujong was operated by the MSS (then known as the DSS) under the control of the military leaders. In PP’s opinion its clear that Crystal’s authority to operate came right from the top of the government. For those in charge of the DPRK regime, the immorality of shipping drugs like heroin and crystal meth were not really as important as the funds that could be raised.

Two key people involved in Sujong’s deadly trade were company president Song Tae Bin Song and manager Kim Yoo Chul. Under cover of mineral water sales, Yoo Chul traveled a lot to China, Thailand and other countries across South East Asia to coordinate illicit narcotics trading. By all the accounts that PP can find, Yoo Chul was a well-connected individual within the North Korean elite. He even studied French at the International University of Foreign Studies in Pyongyang and worked as a researcher at the Juche Research Center before joining Sujong.

The DPRK did not seem to be concerned that it was sending drugs into countries that it was meant to be friendly with. Even more shockingly, North Korea used its official, accredited diplomats to carry the drugs. According to a Vietnamese analyst who spoke to PP, in 2015 the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs made plans to transport meth in to Hanoi to be distributed by its own diplomats. Profits from the sales would then be transported back to Pyongyang on official visits. Other incidents have also been well documented. For example, in 2003 Australian officials seized a North Korean vessel (the “Pong Su“) carrying heroin, while in 2012, a North Korean Embassy in Eastern Europe received a major drugs shipment with orders to sell the product and send the money home.

See the source image
The Pong Su leaving Sydney before being sunk by the Australian Military

Showing the massive extent of the illicit activity, a US Congressional Research Report from January 2007 mentions at least 50 documented incidents of DPRK drug trafficking in more than 20 countries across the world. Many of which involved the arrest and detention of diplomats.

Financial pressure

With low wages and constant pressure to generate money for the regime, North Korean diplomats often have little choice but to carry out criminal activity. PP knows that they don’t make much money – at one DPRK mission in South East Asia, the ambassador received $800 a month to cover all of the missions expenses. Others receive even less and resort to black market trading of cigarettes and alcohol as a result. While the regime has just recently asked its diplomats to scale down their involvement in illegal activities due to fear of expulsions, illegal smuggling remains an important source of funds.

With this level of financial pressure, and leadership that has no regard for human life, it is unsurprising that the DPRK turns to selling drugs like heroin and methamphetamines to raise money. North Korea made lots of money from selling these products into neighboring countries like China, Japan and Vietnam – who then had to deal with the human cost of the trade.

North Korea supplied criminal networks, terrorist organizations and other rogue states with millions of dollars of counterfeit bills.

Since 1989 North Korea has been printing fake US dollar bills on a massive scale using professional presses to achieve an extremely high level of accuracy. The fake bills are of such high quality that they have proved difficult to detect on the international market. This has led to currency fraud investigators dubbing them ‘supernotes’ (see article here).

The aim of the supernote counterfeiting program was to raise funds for the country’s nuclear, chemical and long-range missile programs. The initiative – which PP thinks is clearly led from the top of the regime due to its size and complexity – sits alongside a number of other international criminal fundraising schemes the DPRK has used to generate money. These include drugs trafficking, black market smuggling and the illegal wildlife trade.

The DPRK’s production of fake bills is certainly impressive in its size. PP is aware of $45 million worth of counterfeit currency that was seized between 1989 and 2005, running at an average seizure of $2.7 million each year before 2005 when a staggering $11 million was seized. Considerably more currency is likely to have remained in the open market and have never been detected.

North Korea obviously found its sale of counterfeit dollars to be a profitable venture because in late 2009 they also began to produce counterfeit
€200 bills. These were sold at a value of $75 per note and were introduced into Eastern Europe.

North Korean supernotes are usually sold and distributed overseas by hand-picked DPRK diplomatic officials selected by the Kim regime for their expertise in smuggling techniques, and travel across the world to identify likely buyers. These dealers have no issues trying to sell to criminal and terrorist organizations. In the 1990’s PP has found from quite clear evidence that fake bills were distributed via terrorist networks including the IRA, Hezbollah and the Japanese Red Army – as well as organized crime syndicates in Asia (see article here).

In their dealings in Africa the North Koreans also crossed ethical boundaries. They regularly defrauded developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with huge volumes of fake US Dollars. In 2009 officers of the KWP External Liaison Department (ELD) traveled to Nigeria for six months to arrange the sale of supernotes – for 30 percent of their face value. PP has found out from our research that the KWP Operations Department, via the “Korea Stamp Company”, then managed production and delivery of these bills. However many were subsequently seized.

North Korea’s ‘supernote’ program has funded terrorist organizations and powerful organized crime groups across the world. It is one more activity that shows the disregard that North Korea’s leaders hold for international law in pursuit of power.

PP has learned from a South African researcher that North Korean diplomats have reduced their buying and selling of ivory and rhino horns over the last year.

For a regime that has been involved in the slaughter and sale of African wildlife for over 30 years, this sudden change in behaviour appears strange. Kim Jong Un is happy to conduct poisonous nuclear tests, so its hard for PP to imagine that he’s suddenly developed an environmental conscience.

So what could be driving his change of mind?

It looks like a final effort to save the reputation of North Korea’s embassies overseas after its diplomats were caught in a series of embarrassing acts.

In September and October 2016 two North Korean diplomats were separately detained in Addis Ababa for smuggling ivory. In March 2016 a North Korean diplomat in Tanzania was kicked out for ivory and drug trafficking in Zambia and South Africa using a forged passport. Embarrasingly – and widely reported in the global media, in May 2015, Pak Chol-Jun and Kim Jong-Su, both North Korean diplomats based in Pretoria, were arrested with 4.5 kilograms of rhino horns in Maputo. (See article here.)

These are not isolated cases. For decades, the criminal trade in African wildlife has been a valuable source of income for the regime in Pyongyang. The Global Initiative Against Transactional Organised Crime reported in 2016 that North Korean diplomats have been caught smuggling horn and ivory at least 18 times since 1986. (See article here.) The extensive trade also ties in to the wider political destabilisation. For example, in 2009 North Korea provided arms and training to military groups in the DRC and Ethiopia in exchange for diamonds and ivory. These goods were smuggled out for resale to organised crime groups in Thailand.

With this long and negative history in Africa, is the DPRK going to stop its involvement in wildlife crime? It doesn’t seem likely to PP.

Indeed, the regime already appears to have lost control of the issue. PP has learned that in the last few months, middlemen in West Africa claimed that DPRK labourers in Africa were continuing to smuggle ivory for their own personal profit. North Korean workers are a source of cheap labour in poorly managed mining projects in the forests of West and Central Africa. Forced to hand over all of their wages to Kim Jong Un’s nuclear pet project, PP doesn’t think that they will stop exploiting Africa’s wildlife to make some money on the side.

North Korean involvement in wildlife crime looks likely to continue. African governments must unite to stop these criminal acts. Pyongyang’s diplomats overseas must not be allowed to continue destroying Africa’s natural wealth for their own benefit.

North Korea continues to pressure its overseas workers to produce revenue with little regard for their wellbeing – slavery?

PP found reports that according to a Mauritius investigative journalist, a North Korean fishing crew based in the country was refused the permission to access medical treatment by the DPRK regime – in spite of severe illness that left the members of the crew unable to work. The North Korea government refused permission for the sick workers to even leave Mauritius despite warnings about a severe threat to life and wellbeing.

The problems of North Korean fishing crews has made headlines before, as the isolated country’s desperate economic situation forces them into waters further and further from the North Korean coast. In January this year, three members of a twelve-man crew were found dead after their boat capsized in the Sea of Japan. Four more bodies were found in a separate boat nearby. (See article here.)

Fishing is not the only dangerous industry that DPRK laborers are forced into by the regime. North Korean workers have been killed in industrial accidents all around the world, including three miners that burned to death in an explosion at a coal mine in Malaysia in November 2014. (See article here.) Construction workers building the World Cup stadium in Qatar were taking home approximately 10% of the salary they were supposed to earn, with the rest being sent straight to the regime. The amounted to approximately $100/month in pay left over for the workers to live on – less than $3.50 per day.

It is clear to PP that higher pressure on fisherman shows that ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions are having a major impact on North Korea’s economy. Since the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2371 in September last year, pressure has really increased against the state and its overseas business ventures. 2371, which bans the member states from accepting additional workers from North Korea, has been strongly implemented by some of DPRK’s previous international allies.

For example, Angola, traditionally a North Korean ally, expelled 154 North Korean construction workers in November 2017; Sudan announced the stop of all their trade and military and the U.A.E. agreed to suspend any new visas from October 2017. The pressure is only increasing!

This should all be good news for North Korea’s overseas workforce, which has long labored under a form of slavery in support of the repressive government. However, reports from human rights activists suggests to PP that North Korea continues to send workers overseas in contravention of UN sanctions and the dangerous working conditions they are facing. The numbers are unclear but between 50,000 and 80,000 North Koreans are believed to be laboring overseas, with most of them based in Russia and China. (see article here.) There are still reports of construction workers earning less than $2 an hour, a figure which looks even more worrying if the workers only actually receive 10% of their earnings.

North Korea continues to make the case for more work permits for laborers based in Russia, as well as seeking to send more workers to other countries including Uganda , Belarus and Nigeria. Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s call for African nations to end economic ties with North Korea suggests to PP that this activity remains a concern, in spite of the extensive sanctions in place. North Korea’s continued human rights abuses against its own citizens, at home and abroad, must stimulate other countries to stick firmly to UN resolutions.

The outlook for North Korean workers overseas remains difficult. Showing just how close to slavery this employment is, PP hears reports that workers have had their mobile phones confiscated to limit their access to information and to prevent defections. To get around this, the regime chooses workers who have wives and children in the DPRK so they are less likely to defect.

Without more international pressure to stop this form of modern day slavery, North Korean citizens will continue to die in unsafe mines, fishing vessels and construction sites around the world.