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We are always interested in new sources of material on North Korea, and thus were pleased to come on New Focus International. A distinctive feature of New Focus is that it is run by North Koreans “in exile,” as they site puts it nicely; the choice of words suggests the promise of return. The editor-in-chief [...]
North Korea has long engaged in illicit activities of various sorts including counterfeiting, smuggling, drug trafficking, insurance fraud and so on. The importance of these activities to the North Korean economy is often exaggerated—attributing to North Korea revenues based on the “street prices” for drugs that go through multiple hands before reaching the final consumers, [...]
Back in July, we blogged on a spate of stories on the illicit drug trade. Curtis Melvin’s North Korea Economy Watch has a good archive on the topic. My colleague Barry Naughton alerted us to a recent story in the Hong Kong-based Phoenix Weekly ; we were intrigued because the media in China stays quiet [...]
Chinese, South Korean, and American news sources have reported the arrest of a group charged with smuggling methamphetamine (aka crystal meth) from North Korea into China. Dong-a Ilbo put the value of the haul at $60 million, an extraordinary figure, even if based on “street prices.” Crystal meth usage in Jilin province has exploded over the [...]
Scanning Good Friends North Korea Today No. 404 it hit me that these stories had real cinematic possibilities. Some Hallyu remake possibilities: New Jack City (1991). Ice-T begins his transition from being the scourge of cops to playing on TV; Wesley Snipes plays a criminal in the movies before becoming one in real life; Chris [...]
Two stories of North Korean illicit activities hit the headlines this month through they illustrate different dimensions of the issue. North Korean diplomats have long been engaged in smuggling and other illicit activities, motivated at least in part by their need to generate revenue that is kicked back to Pyongyang. (Not all of these money-making schemes [...]
The recent controversies over Executive Order 13570 have refocused attention on the web of regulations that constrain economic exchange between the United States and North Korea. Beyond the issues associated with direct bilateral trade, US economic diplomacy toward North Korea is conditioned on a variety of laws which use restrictions on economic relations as an [...]
