Category: Sanctions

September 8, 2006

The Seven Billion Dollar Man

[Update: The actual figure turns out to be over $7 billion, if you include all aid since 1995 and add in Kim Dae Jung’s $500M bribes. It still excludes money from South Korean corporations, and of course, aid from the U.N. or other countries. South Korea now provides 46% of North Korea’s support. h/t The Nomad.] Let’s briefly review where we’ve been with North Korea over the last year — missile tests, nuclear scares, crude insults, food aid stolen from...

Categories Appeasement/Money Laundering

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

September 4, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 7 (Updated)

[Update: My closing comment below about an expansion of our goals was an understatement: The U.S. Treasury Department, in a shift in its policy toward North Korea, has decided to treat all transactions involving the nation as suspect and subject to sanctions while dictator Kim Jong Il develops nuclear weapons. “Given the regime’s counterfeiting of U.S. currency, narcotics trafficking and use of accounts worldwide to conduct proliferation-related transactions, the line between illicit and licit North Korean money is nearly invisible,”...

Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Economics

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 28, 2006

Witness: Counterfeit Bills Came from N. Korea

If you don’t know the background, start here. One of the Chinese gangsters is apparently cooperating, and went to court yesterday: A Californian man indicted on charges of smuggling counterfeit dollars into the U.S. testified at his trial that the high-quality counterfeit US$100 bills or “supernotes” were manufactured in North Korea, the National Intelligence Service said Monday. The NIS reported to the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee that the man admitted conspiracy to smuggle the supernotes and admitted where the phony...

Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering

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

August 19, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 4: Smoke ‘em While You’ve Got ‘em.

Several months ago, some misguided BBC staffer asked me to fight above my weight and debate former Ambassador Donald Gregg about the allegation that British American Tobacco was secretly making cigarettes in North Korea. (The debate was for a pilot program and never aired.) At the time, I argued that the decision to grow or import tobacco should also be viewed as a decision not to grow or import food. Amb. Gregg, now president of the Korea Society, is a...

Categories Axis of Evil/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Japan/NK Economics/Washington Views

August 7, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 2

During Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levy’s recent visit to a series of Asian nations, I wondered just how Treasury’s green eyeshades had landed on a particular series of bank accounts that attracted his attention. Via a U.S. Treasury official who spoke with the Donga Ilbo, we now know that the answer is linked to the first two questions I asked after the mass arrests that came of Operation Smoking Dragon last August: 1. Were any North Korean nationals caught or implicated?...

Categories Counterfeiting/NK Economics

July 28, 2006

Kim Jong Il, Unplugged

“You can get a lot farther with a kind word and a gun than a kind word alone.” — Al Capone In an interview with Radio Free Asia (Korean only), Raphael Perl of the Congressional Research Service suggests exactly what I suspected about polite requests from U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey to crack down on North Korean money laundering — the polite requests are backed by some powerful veiled threats: One option available to the US government, although this is...

Categories Counterfeiting/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views

July 25, 2006

Let Them Make Won!

Update: Gee, how curious. Police recovered a briefcase containing a hoard of probably forged United States Treasury bonds worth $500 million during the investigation of a local theft, Seoul’s Gwanak Police Station announced. Police said they are looking into the possible involvement of international crime networks. ===================================== With Seoul questioning why the United States is making such a big deal out of North Korea’s counterfeiting of its currency and saying it “will take no further steps” against it, the Chosun...

Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/U.S. & Korea

July 24, 2006

Now What? Part 3: Dave, What Are You Doing?

Update: The BOC account played a role in the 2000 summit scandal, according to the Chosun Ilbo. What skill it must take to step in it this hard: SEOUL, July 24 (Yonhap) — North Korea is suspected of having printed fake Chinese currency, which prompted the Bank of China (BOC) to freeze all of its North Korean accounts in an apparent retaliation, a South Korean legislator asserted on Monday. Quoting a number of unidentified U.S. officials, Rep. Park Jin of...

Categories China/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks

July 23, 2006

MUST READ: NYT on NK Counterfeiting

The New York Times has a very extensive article on North Korea’s counterfeiting operations: By 1984, as North Korea’s planned economy began to fall apart, Kim Jong Il, who by that time was effectively running much of the government, issued another directive, according to the North Korean specialist, who told me he has obtained a copy of the document. It explained that “producing and using counterfeit U.S. dollars” was a means, in part, for “overcoming economic crisis. The economic crisis...

Categories Counterfeiting/NK Economics/Washington Views

July 22, 2006

Now What? Part 2

Right after North Korea launched its round of missiles, I outlined a series of options, mostly financial, that the U.S. and other countries could take in response. Two weeks later, several aspects of that forecast are holding up well. What looked at first like another U.N. farce, then a modestly successful sanctions effort (by U.N. standards, anyway), now looks to be an important and hard-won component of a coordinated effort to tighten the squeeze on the regime-sustaining half of North...

Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD

July 6, 2006

At the U.N., Life Imitates ‘Team America’

Kim Jong Il: Hans Brix? Oh no! Oh, herro. Great to see you again, Hans! Hans Blix: Mr. Il, I was supposed to be allowed to inspect your palace today, but your guards won’t let me enter certain areas. Kim Jong Il: Hans, Hans, Hans! We’ve been frew this a dozen times. I don’t have any weapons of mass destwuction, OK Hans? Hans Blix: Then let me look around, so I can ease the UN’s collective mind. I’m sorry, but...

Categories "United" Nations/China/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/NK Economics/Unintended Humor/WMD/WTF?

July 4, 2006

Now What?

North Korea’s missile test opens up new options for the United States. Here is a list of them. [Scroll down for updates.] It too easy to say, as many will in the coming days, that there is little that the United States and other nations can do to North Korea diplomatically or economically now that it has done the unthinkably stupid and launched its (taepo)dong and (count ’em!) five smaller missiles [Update: make that six]. Let me express my respectful...

Categories Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Geopolitics/NK Economics/U.S. Law/WMD

June 28, 2006

The End of the Rainbow

Really, this piece by Michael O’Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki is well reasoned and said. Even if I disagree with much of it, I think they have a good grasp of which threats we ought to be worrying about. The debate about whether regime change would work is competely speculative until we actually try it in earnest, of course. At this point, they had me: [T]he administration should build its North Korea policy around the notion that we need to present...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea

May 19, 2006

Bush’s Old “New” Approach

[Update 2, 5/18: On the other hand, the “Kim Jong Hill” plan looks great next to the Richard Lugar plan, which is nothing more than a shiny new formula for buying lies with bribes. Lugar is a very nice person to meet and has his heart in the right place, but diplomatically, this is not the thing to be proposing when our financial crackdown and our political offensive are both showing some promising signs of success. When dealing with gangsters,...

Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Human Rights/NK Economics/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views/WMD

May 16, 2006

Korea Diary, 17 May 06

If you need an even better illustration of the idiocy of the Tokdo distraction, read this moving story about the families of two hostages, one Japanese and one South Korean, who married during their captivity in North Korea. Yokota expressed gratitude that his son-in-law was a South Korean. “I am so lucky to have a South Korean son-in-law, not a North Korean. I am so happy that I can hope that our families may meet one another again. He said...

Categories Abductions/Activism/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Europe/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Inside NK/Islam/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/News Links/NK Economics/Proliferation/Refugees/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized/WMD