in The Chosun Ilbo. The article shows a photograph of opium being grown in North Korea and infers that the drug production is regime-directed, but it’s also possible that, consistent with recent trends, the regime simply tolerates the production and taxes it heavily. That has the advantage of giving North Korea both the income and plausible deniability, when China and other states complain about state-sponsored drug trafficking.

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Update: More on North Korea’s meth smuggling here, via (interestingly enough) Chinese scholars. Here’s the thing with meth — I used to prosecute meth cases, and cooking it makes an obnoxious, distinctive stench (like a dirty cat box) and requires hard-to-obtain precursor chemicals. In a society where even ordinary consumer goods are hard to get, how would a cooker get chemicals without help from the authorities? How, in a society with no Fourth Amendment and where neighbors are paid to watch and rat each other out, would it be possible for a meth lab to go undetected by the authorities? How would illegal drugs get onto North Korean ships when shipping companies are some of the most tightly state-controlled enterprises in North Korea — and are frequently used by the state for smuggling other illicit cargo?

Which is, I suppose, a respectful disagreement I have with the theory that North Korea’s drug business has privatized. “Tolerated and taxed,” maybe up to a point. Leaking into North Korean society, certainly. But solely the work of unaffiliated local drug cartels? Not a chance.