Thanks to commenter ’snoopy,’ with whom I ordinarily disagree more than not, for posting the link to the complete documentary here. It recently aired on Discovery Times, a partnership of the Discovery Channel and the New York Times.
The Chosun Ilbo reports:
The U.S. special envoy for North Korea Joseph DeTrani is quitting to take up a
job in the office of the director for national intelligence next week. As the
deputy head of Washington’s delegation at six-party talks on North Korea’s
nuclear program and Washington’s man in the near-defunct Korea Energy
Development Organization, DeTrani has been a point man in often informal
contacts between North Korea and the U.S. since he took over as special envoy at
the end of 2003. No successor has been named, but the State Department says the
department’s Korean Affairs James Foster will take over DeTrani’s KEDO duties.
Note that DiTrani has been a point man in “informal” contacts, ie. the gatekeeper of the New York channel and the Administration’s alternative to Jack Pritchard and Selig Harrison. Foster, a career State Department official who speaks Japanese and has no clear ideological history that I could find, may or may not fill DiTrani’s negotiating role. Foster has a history of shadowing DiTrani at quasi-social events where the North Koreans also appear (this is how the New York channel works). This could either mean that State wanted Foster to develop his own relationship with the North Koreans, or that Foster was placed there to keep an eye on DiTrani, a practice the State Department tends to employ to give itself some extra security that its senior officials are toeing the line.
A diplomatic source in Washington said the departure of DeTrani, who originally
worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), does not signify a policy
shift by the U.S. in the North Korean nuclear issue.
Well, maybe, depending on who takes DiTrani’s place at the negotiating table or in the Manhattan cocktail party circuit. But given the much sharper rhetoric from Washington recently, I’d hesitate to make a statement that definitive without knowing more facts than this story reports.
On the other hand, DiTrani’s departure can’t be good news for Pyongyang. DiTrani explained his views in great detail at this public but off-the-record event, where I actually sat next to him (mostly as a result of bumbling tardiness). I will honor the off-the-record policy that applied to the event by not revealing specifics of what Amb. Di Trani said, but I think he can fairly be characterized as more supportive of and credulous about negotiating with the North Koreans than other members of the negotiating team. DiTrani’s outlook was about what you’d expect in the way of conventional State Department thinking. His softer-than-average line did not extend to support for the accomodation of counterfeiting or drug smuggling. In plain English, I saw DiTrani as a “good cop,” and Hill as the “bad cop.” I’d add that in person, Amb. DiTrani is a genuinely nice person; I can’t shake the idea that his voice and mannerisms reminded me of Christopher Walken.
Another observation: DiTrani’s role in the New York channel means that he did relatively more talking to the North Koreans, but when I last saw Hill and DiTrani before Congress a couple of months ago, it was Hill who did all the talking, as tends to be the case before American audiences. What this means is that each audience tended to see a different face. It’s doubtful that the North Koreans could be much happier with anyone than they are with DiTrani now.
It may also be significant that DiTrani is going to an intel job, where he’ll be far from New York and much less likely to have a good reason to talk to the North Koreans. It would seem that his New York channel days are genuinely over.
Some interesting stats on South Korea’s protection payments to the North:
Recently publicized material by the South Korean Unification Ministry revealed that a total of 340.6 billion won ($324.3 million) was spent on inter Korean cooperation projects from January until November this year, ranging from supporting the North Korean national soccer team to sending fertilizer aid to the North.
Less than half of this amount was for fertilizer and rice.
A total of 157.3 billion won was spent on fertilizer and rice aid to the North, making up almost half of the total aid given to Pyongyang, while the rest was spent on projects aimed at facilitating more exchange of personnel between the two Koreas. The countries are still technically at war since an armistice in 1953 ended the Korean War.These projects include the Mt. Kumgang tours and expansion of the Kaesong industrial complex, which cost 2.2 billion won and 10.6 billion won, respectively.
Some of the aid patently served the political interests of Pyongyang and its friends in the South:
For the cash strapped North, aid was also extended on the sports field as a total of 400 million won was given to the North in order for its national soccer team to travel to and play at international events staged in the South.
A total of 53 civic organizations supporting the North received 5.7 billion won. Oh My News, an Internet news service that sponsored a marathon competition in Pyongyang, received 80 million won.
Kudos to the JI for pointing out this contrast:
Nevertheless, an international conference on North Korean human rights [sponsored by Freedom House –ofk] held recently didn’t receive any government aid. Also, an inter-Korean railroad system on which the government has spent 126.4 billion won has not been opened, due to the North’s refusal to cooperate.
Civic organizations have criticized the government for its “kid glove” handling of the human rights situation in the North despite the heavy annual aid that Seoul has given in recent years. Fearing to antagonise Pyongyang, Seoul has continuously sidestepped this issue.
Mine Would Ask Why He’s the Only Fat Man in the Entire Country: “Open North Korea Broadcasting, a private radio station, says it is giving people a chance to send a message to Kim Jong-il. The Korean-language broadcaster, with offices here but with headquarters in Washington, D.C., said yesterday that starting on New Year’s Day and continuing for a week, it would broadcast free messages from South Koreans to North Koreans in general or to specific people there. Currently the station charges for airing individual commentary: 50,000 won ($49) for the five-minute broadcasts. “As long as the messages are not in violation of South Korean laws, we will air them,” said Ha Tae-gyeong, the secretary-general of the broadcasting operation. The station beams an hour of short-wave transmissions northward for an hour a day beginning at midnight.”
Please Stop Doing What You’re Not Doing: “Continuing the administration’s high-wire balancing act yesterday, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told the Seoul Foreign Correspondents’ Club that Seoul is still unconvinced by purported evidence that North Korea is counterfeiting U.S. currency. Nevertheless, he said, he had told his counterpart at a North-South ministerial meeting earlier this month that if the North was behind the production of high-quality counterfeit $100 bills, it should stop immediately.”
Chung will soon step down as Anti-Unification Minister to begin his run for the presidency. He is expected to retain his post as North Korea’s Minister for Southern Affairs.
Food Aid Update: “The World Food Program, a United Nations arm, will make a final decision next month on whether to shut down its office in North Korea’s capital city. Richard Ragan, the head of the relief agency’s office in Pyongyang, spoke by telephone to the JoongAng Ilbo yesterday. Mr. Ragan said his organization faces a choice between withdrawing and shifting the focus of its work in the North from food aid to longer-term agricultural development programs.”
From the Korea Times:
Almost five in 10 people say they will vote for candidates from the largest opposition Grand National Party (GNP) in the local elections in May, according to the latest opinion poll.
Roh Moo-hyun is expected to recognize by midyear that he will become increasingly powerless, political experts said.
In the survey of 1,010 adults conducted Dec. 27-28, 46.3 percent of the respondents said they will give support to GNP candidates in the May 31 local elections, followed by 20.9 percent for the ruling Uri Party and 8.1 percent for the pro-union Democratic Labor Party.
The article has a must-see graphic of the various parties’ ratings.
“It’s actually a midterm evaluation of the government,'’ Yoon Eun-key, political affairs commentator in Seoul, said. “If the Uri Party fails to obtain good results, a lame duck government will come much earlier. In addition, presidential hopefuls, like Lee Myung-bak, will increasingly raise their voices against the government’s politics.'’
Park Geun Hye seems to have peaked for now.
For the first time in The Korea Times poll track, Seoul City Mayor Lee Myung-bak [link to OFK bio of Lee], a GNP member, received the strongest approval among the presidential aspirants for 2007.
If the current trend remains unchanged, the political landscape will not undergo a big transformation in May and will subsequently affect the presidential race in 2007, Yoon said.
The last sentence is self-disclaiming. Something will change. Roh will make several unbalanced statements, Chung Dong-Young (who didn’t fare too well, either) will continue to offer evidence that he’s out of his intellectual depth, or the GNP will try to match its attempt to impeach Roh and set a new standard for shooting itself in the foot.
Just as his Asian deposits have fled Macau for China, his European assets have moved from Switzerland to Luxembourg, according to this:
TOKYO (Yonhap) — North Korean leader Kim Jong-il switched a number of his secret bank accounts from Switzerland to Luxembourg several years ago, a news report said Tuesday.
Luxembourg is a NATO member over which the United States should be able to exert far more influence than over Switzerland.
North Korean officials, who have managed Kim’s money in Switzerland, were confirmed as having visited Luxembourg several times, the Japanese news weekly AERA reported in its latest edition, citing former unnamed intelligence officials in South Korea.
Kim owns a substantial percentage of the money, which is believed to be revenue from the sale of missiles and counterfeit U.S. dollars, the report said.
The money is distributed worldwide and managed by locally established insurance companies, but controlled by the head office of North Korea’s National Defense Commission, Kim’s main office, the report said.
[cue violin music] The early years of the 21st Century were a sad time for the diplomats of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea–eating at Denny’s, sailing the East River on a boat without stairs or a galley, shopping at Walgreen’s on Sundays, drinking instant coffee, moving from place to place to skip out on back rent and unpaid phone bills–in short, living like people in the Bronx (just kidding!). But the Chosun Ilbo reports that for our North Korean friends, at least for those who live outside of North Korea, there is a May after every December:
However, recently the economic conditions and spirits of the North Koreans seem to have improved, their South Korean counterparts report. As late as the mid 1990s, North Korea could not afford the rent for the building they occupied, and the international phone service was cut off because it failed to pay the phone bills. These days they sport cell phones and more often than not can afford to treat diplomats from other countries. On occasion, they rent South Korean movies or dramas in video stores run by Korean Americans.
Why, just the other day one of them even paid off his back rent with a stack of crisp new hundreds.
South Korean exploiters of slave labor investors are bracing for protests and riots across North Korea in the wake of a tragic fatal accident this week:
A North Korean soldier died and two others were injured when they were run over by a car driven by a South Korean visitor in the North’s scenic Mt.Kumgang
resort on Tuesday night.
Just in case you’re wondering, this story actually produces a negative value on the OhMyNews scale.
The driver identified as Jung (33) was an employee with Arthome INC, a Hyundai Asan affiliate. He was driving his Galloper after dinner in a restaurant near Goseong Port when he ran over three North Korean soldiers 50 m from the Mt.Kumgang gas station. One soldier was killed while another reportedly suffered a broken leg and the third escaped with slight injuries. It was the first time since the tours started that a South Korean has been involved in a car accident killing a North Korean. A Hyundai Asan official said it was not yet known if the driver was drunk.
So, when can we expect the revolutionary peoples’ tribunal?
A Unification Ministry official said under an inter-Korean agreement Jung faced a warning or a fine in the North, or would be deported to South Korea to face punishment here.
All I can say is, thank God the North Koreans understand that an accident is just an accident. Still, I’d love to know what the ol’ Intoxilyzer 5000 would have said.
Update 12/29: Turns out, it isn’t the first time this has happened:
A similar incident happened in October 2001. A Southern driver killed a North Korean soldier in a traffic accident in Kumho, where international consortium was building two light-water reactors for the North according to the Agreed Framework, a bilateral deal between Washington and Pyongyang in 1994.
At that time, the main contractor, the South’s Korea Electric Power Corporation, paid fines of between $5,000 and $10,000 and offered his deepest condolences. The driver was repatriated to the South and punished under South Korean law.
Today comes word of more sanctions on Chinese state-owned companies, all with close ties to the military, for helping Iran with its nuke and missile programs.
The sanctions, announced by the State Department, are part of a diplomatically complex effort to cut off the flow of technology into Iran that could aid its weapons programs, while pressing both China and Russia to threaten action against Tehran at the United Nations Security Council.
Included in the latest sanctions, first reported Tuesday by The Washington Times, are two companies closely tied to the Chinese military: the China North Industries Corporation, known as Norinco, and the China Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation, or Catic, which is one of the country’s largest producers of military aircraft.
. . . .The other Chinese companies were the Hongdu Aviation Industry Group, the Limmt Metallurgy and Minerals Company, Ounion (Asia) International Economic and Technical Cooperation Ltd. and the Zibo Chemet Equipment Company.
Further reading on some of the sanctioned companies here:
The Times writes that no evidence links these technology transfers to the highest levels of China’s government, but that statement dissolves under a flood of circumstantial evidence, and reopens concerns about a recently-exposed attempt by a Chinese triad to smuggle surface-to-air missiles into the United States. A Chinese general was implicated in the plot. Given the extensive and often repetitive nature of the violations by these Chinese parastatals and the close connections between those companies and the Chinese military, it’s not unreasonable to infer that senior officials of the Chinese government authorized those transfers. I’m not alone in drawing that inference:
The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that China and North Korea have cooperated to produce and deliver components for missile and WMD programs to a number of Middle East clients, Geostrategy-Direct.com reported in its current editions. The intelligence finding led to the U.S. decision to impose sanctions on Chinese companies cooperating with North Korea in the fields of missile and WMD. After a lengthy debate within the National Security Council and State Department, the Bush administration approved the new sanctions to demonstrate a tougher policy toward Beijing, the officials said.
Note the familiarity of some of the names mentioned in that 2003 report:
The five Chinese companies sanctioned were identified as Taian Foreign Trade General Corporation of China, the Zibo Chemical Equipment Plant of China, the Liyang Yunlong Chemical Equipment Group Company of China, China North Industries Corporation, known as Norinco, and the China Precision Machinery Import/Export Corporation.
The best that can be said in China’s defense is that nearly three years after being put on notice that its top military parastatals were working with the North Koreans to arm Iran, China’s government has failed to take effective measures to stop to very same companies from selling similar components to the same customer.
Opening the floodgates of dual-use technology to China–and for some very suspect reasons–ought to be recorded as one of America’s greatest foreign policy miscalculations, alongside President George H.W. Bush’s failure to confront China morally and politically after the massacre at Tienanmen. The current administration doesn’t escape criticism, either. Just this past March, the State Department extended a waiver of import sanctions against NORINCO, clearly a flagrant supplier of sensitive technology to the mullahs. This apparently caused sufficient concern in Congress that the Senate held hearings. Those hearings specifically focused on both NORINCO and the North Korean nuclear crisis.
North Korea’s Changgwang Sinyong, whose name repeatedly emerges in these reports, has a long history of selling missile and UAV technology to A.Q. Khan’s network in Pakistan and Yemen (you may recall the So San incident), as well as to Iran. This 2003 report states that CSC also has a significant presence in Syria, Libya, and Egypt. CSC is essentially North Korea’s state missile technology proliferation firm. It has been sanctioned at least eight times.
On June 28, 2005, President Bush signed Executive Order 13,382, which imposed the ultimate penalty on CSC and several other North Korean entities: it flat-out froze their assets. Shortly thereafter, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control published some interesting details. First, we learned that CSC uses a number of aliases / dummy companies / fronts, including “Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation,” “External Technology General Corporation,” and “North Korean Mining Development Trading Corporation,” or KOMID. Other North Korean companies sanctioned:
I’ll give you one final detail on Changgwang Sinyong. India’s Chandigarh Tribune, presumably passing along a leak from Indian intelligence, states that in 1998, one Kang Thae-Yun was CSC’s Pakistani representative, and was heavily involved in selling missile technology to Pakistan and Iran. Mr. Kang’s wife found a novel way to bring more income into the Kang household: feeding information about CSC’s activities to “western intelligence agencies.” In June of that year, North Korean counterintel evidently caught up with her and terminated her career with extreme prejudice.
The story appears to be well sourced; a number of the details it reported back in 2002 were subsequently confirmed with the exposure of A.Q. Khan’s links to the North Koreans. It is followed up by this 2004 report, of somewhat questionable origin, which claims that the murdered woman, Kim Sa Nae, was actually a nuclear scientist herself, and was shot under murky circumstances while staying on A.Q. Khan’s own compound with other North Korean scientists.
A Pakistani official said his country’s intelligence agents suspected that the United States was using Kim as a mole inside the North Korean delegation, but that her actions were uncovered by Pakistani and North Korean agents.
An Indian official who is familiar with his government’s assessment of the killing said bluntly: “She was in fact killed by the North Koreans on the grounds that she was in touch with certain Western diplomats.”
The report notes that three days after her death, Ms. Kim’s body was tossed onto a C-130 carrying centrifuges and bomb blueprints to Pyongyang. A month later, Mr. Kang also returned to North Korea, undoubtedly under very uncomfortable circumstances.
The other news today about China’s dealings with evil regimes comes in the form of this Chosun Ilbo report, speculating that another Chinese bank may soon face U.S. money laundering sanctions in connection with North Korea:
The U.S is secretly investigating a new Chinese bank on charges of laundering illegal capital flowing out of North Korea, the Japanese Yomiuri Shimbun reported Wednesday, quoting diplomatic sources. However, the name and location of the bank has not been revealed, the daily added. The U.S has seized forged US$100 bills–the so-called supernotes-worth US$45 million over the last 16 years since it uncovered the counterfeit notes made in the North for the first time in late 1989. In Taiwan alone, the US confiscated supernotes worth US$13 million last year. The U.S Treasury Department recently informed countries involved in the situation and urged them to take countermeasures, the Japanese daily reported.
I’ve previously reported on the effect of a similar investigation of Banco Delta Asia of Macau, Macau’s second-largest bank. Delta ultimately cut off North Koreans’ transactions, resulting in an exodus of North Korean spies and money launderers from Macau. The Asian WSJ has reported that the Bank of China, China’s largest bank, is also under investigation by Treasury, although it’s not clear if the BOC is the subject of the latest Yomiuri report. Seng Heng Bank, also of Macau, has also been named.
If the explanation were as simple as money, the Chinese parastatals wouldn’t risk the loss of their potential revenue with the United States or such deep trouble with the U.S. Congres. Only strategic considerations conceivably trump those other interests.
China’s near term goals are the establishment of its supremacy in East Asia, reunification with Taiwan on its own anti-democratic terms, and the securing of its access to raw materials that are key to its economy. The only real potential threat to China’s goals is the United States, along with an emerging alliance of Asian and Pacific nations, jointly pursuing a quiet strategy of containing Chinese naval power inside the Island Curtain that stretches from the Kuriles to the Strait of Molucca. As with China’s support for North Korea, which is conditional in theory but unconditional in practice, China seeks to slip the bonds of containment by leveraging security distractions for the United States without creating an unreasonable risk of war.
Unquestionably, 9/11 and Iraq have been extraordinarily helpful to China’s plans, having arguably put an end to the Pentagon’s two-major-theater-war doctrine. There can be little doubt that Chinese generals quietly relish the idea of Iran and North Korea growing as nuclear and proliferation threats to the United States, and probably the thought of more mass-casualty terror attacks in the United States.
Notwithstanding the temporary convergence of economic interests, China is no friend of the American people. But then again, it’s not exactly a friend of the Chinese people, either.
So just how stupid is Bashar Asad? Now that Syria has again been linked to a politically motivated assassination in Lebanon, and given how that all worked out for Syria the first time, you have to suspect that Bashar’s father married for something other than intelligence.
I wonder just how much of a Doctor-Evil-and-Scott vibe there must have been in Damascus while wily old Hafiz was alive.
The Strain is Showing. A must-see live report from a journalist “embedded” with terrorists near Tikrit.
Andy Jackson, as seen on (Swedish) TV, continues his excellent blogging of events surrounding the Freedom House Conference over at his own blog. Although LiNK seems to have stolen the initiative from the Red Guards–as Adrian Hong’s confrontation with one of their sullen leaders illustrates–Andy’s objective analysis has some criticisms of how they’re organizing their organizers. Andy also has some excellent advice on how to treat the riot police when they show up. I emphatically echo his recommendation to invite them in, rather than the confoundingly stupid use of gratuitous street violence. Great pics on both posts, too!
The Red Guards have had decades to infiltrate the campuses and spread their roots widely in their soil. The simple fact of their success at promoting the planet’s most ruthless, tyrannical, and fatally inefficient system of government is testimony to that. It will take some exceptional elan to challenge the radical left’s domination of South Korean student politics.
South Korea’s president Roh Moo-Hyun may have entered office with the hope of a multifaceted agenda, but that agenda has only one surviving facet. His moves to create a more redistributive economy has sufficiently damaged the economy that Roh’s allies would dream of running on that record in the 2006 elections. The attempt to move the capital out of Seoul was a political disaster; it was blocked in the courts, and mostly succeeded in creating a dangerous new political enemy in Lee Myung-Bak. Promises of a cleaner government had an exceptionally short shelf life, even by the standards of Korean politics. The predictable promises to make Korea the hub of this-or-that came and went. Even the feel-good politics of publicly diminishing relations with Japan and the United States have failed to produce lasting support at the polls. There are some signs that with the United States moving to downgrade the alliance on its own accord, voters think things may have gone too far.
Paradoxically, the one Uri policy that still appears to have substantial public support is appeasment of the North, although that policy is arguably the least successful of all. I intentionally use the politically-loaded term “appeasement” to mean accomodation of North Korea’s every crime–whether against its citizens, other nations, humanity as a whole, or even Seoul itself–without any expectation of significant countervailing concessions by North Korea. The Uri government often treats North Korea’s very arrival at a meeting to accept more generous gifts from South Korean taxpayers as a concession in itself. This isn’t surprising, given that the government couldn’t find much else to boast about. It has yet to bring home even such fundamental concessions as the North’s minimal compliance with the 1953 armistice, which required the return of all prisoners of war.
Thus, the appeasement of North Korean behavior–no matter how unquestionably beyond the pale–is the one surviving piece of the Roh agenda for which significant popular support exists, and Roh now finds it under dire threat now that the FBI, Homeland Security, and Treasury have unrolled a global network of North Korean counterfeiting operations. Denial is a predictable enough response for the Roh Administration, but the facts persistently intrude to disturb the conception of the new policy:
A South Korean intelligence official told the JoongAng Daily yesterday that the North’s counterfeiting activities have been monitored since the early 1990s and that evidence gathered during that period is enough to give credibility to Washington’s claim that Pyongyang has manufactured forged U.S. dollar bills.
“With current government policies in place that want to keep the North’s regime afloat, the government wants to delay acting on the issue as long as possible,” the official said. “North Korean counterfeiting activities are nothing new, and they are a known lifeline for the North.”
Most officials here have been dodging questions and repeating that the administration wants more decisive evidence. “For us, there is the big picture to be considered. We have never said that we will just sit down and do nothing if there are illegal activities,” said one senior government official.
U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow has also been making the case:
Washington is sending a team of State Department officials and agents to Seoul in January to provide new and detailed information on North Korean counterfeiting, including its purchase of special ink and printing equipment , a source in Washington said yesterday.
The source said in a phone interview that the large number at a briefing in Washington last Friday on North Korean counterfeit activities, in which diplomats from 40 countries participated, made it hard to provide strong evidence at the time.
Which is odd, because there are few nations that are less reliable recipients of U.S. intelligence today than South Korea.
Meanwhile, referring to an incident earlier this year in which South Korean intelligence officials said, without disclosing the origin, high quality $100 bills were in circulation in the country, U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Alexander Vershbow said yesterday, “We are quite convinced that the origin of these supernotes can be traced to North Korea.”
The ambassador reiterated that the issue was separate from ongoing nuclear talks with the North. Nonetheless, he also reaffirmed Washington’s unmoving position on the matter. “We will take the necessary measures to protect ourselves and to enforce our laws,” said the U.S. ambassador.
. . . .Just hours after the remarks, Seoul took an immediate stance on the ambassador’s remarks. A senior South Korean official suggested that Mr. Vershbow’s remarks could be described as “careless,” and that they were inappropriate for an ambassador to make.
This might just as well have been another “The Death of an Alliance” post. I should also point out that Vershbow has also warned the North Koreans that this should not be seen as an excuse for more stalls and standoffs in the six-nation goat rodeo that increasingly appears headed for the the goat corral, and the goat knacker.
Even your correspondent has gotten in on the discussion. Over the weekend, I was called by a reporter from one of South Korea’s major dailies (I won’t say which one) asking me to provide what evidence I’ve gathered in blogging this story–and I can justifiably claim to have recognized its significance since it first broke. I was flattered to assist with numerous links, and the person was clearly interested in a thorough exploration of the facts. A better partnership between blogs and traditional media means more democratization of our information, and it may also mean that some underreported aspects of this story may get more attention than they’ve received thus far.
The editorial page of the Chosun Ilbo also shows some thinking with which I couldn’t exactly argue, either, starting with a few more details on South Korea’s own assessment of North Korea’s counterfeiting activities:
The National Intelligence Service, in a 1998 report titled “A New Threat in the 21st Century: Realities of and Responses to International Crimes”, said North Korea forges and circulates US$100 bank notes worth $15 million a year, and that the counterfeiting is carried out by a firm called February Silver Trading in the suburbs of Pyongyang.
The NIS said in reports to the National Assembly the same year and the next that the North operates three banknote forging agencies, and that more than $4.6 million in bogus dollar bills were uncovered in circulation on 13 occasions since 1994. “That North Korea is a dollar counterfeiting country was common knowledge among intelligence officials,” said a former senior NIS official.
Yet suddenly, when the U.S. brings up the question of North Korea’s counterfeiting activities, our government says there is insufficient evidence. That has prompted American officials to accuse our government of lying. The reason for the volte-face is that Seoul is afraid of antagonizing Pyongyang while six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing North Korea hang in the balance.
It then goes on to restate a point in which I’ve taken great pleasure in repeating:
But what if the shoe was on the other foot? If a country hostile to South Korea forged a huge number of our banknotes and circulated them around the world, what should our government do? And if an ostensible ally of ours defended that counterfeiting country, what would we think of that ally?
That’s my cue:
I’m not sure the voters of South Korea are ready to choose that platform, a fact that even Chung Dong-Young may be prepared to accept.