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US State Department: 2010 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

The International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) is an annual report by the Department of State to Congress prepared in accordance with the Foreign Assistance Act. It describes the efforts of key countries to attack all aspects of the international drug trade in Calendar Year 2009. Volume I (PDF) covers drug and chemical control activities, and beginning on page 488, there is a profile on the DPRK:

North Korea

I. Summary
There is insufficient evidence to say with certainty that state-sponsored trafficking by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) has stopped entirely in 2009. Nonetheless, the paucity of public reports of drug trafficking with a direct DPRK connection suggests strongly that such high-profile drug trafficking has either ceased, or has been reduced very sharply. Trafficking of methamphetamine along the DPRK-China border continues. There are indications that international drug traffickers can purchase methamphetamine in kilogram quantities in some of the major towns on the Chinese side of the DPRK-China border. Other criminality involving DPRK territory, such as counterfeit cigarette smuggling and counterfeiting/passing of U.S. currency (supernotes), continues.

II. Status of Country
No confirmed instances of large-scale drug trafficking involving the DPRK state or its nationals were reported in 2009. This is the seventh consecutive year that there were no known instances of large-scale methamphetamine or heroin trafficking to either Japan or Taiwan with direct DPRK state institution involvement. From the mid- 1990s through to 2002/2003, numerous instances of narcotics trafficking involving DPRK persons and important state assets, such as sea-going vessels and military patrol boats, were recorded in Taiwan and Japan.

Press reporting suggests that methamphetamine trafficking along the DPRK-China border continues. These reports detail the activities of organized criminal groups arranging methamphetamine shipments to destinations in Asia from the major towns near the DPRK-China border (e.g., Dandong, Yanji).

III. Country Actions Against Drugs in 2009
Law Enforcement Efforts. The source of relatively small quantities of methamphetamine seized elsewhere in Asia can occasionally be traced back to the China-DPRK border area. Local press reports in Asia describe apprehensions of traffickers smuggling methamphetamine and indicate that arrangements to purchase that methamphetamine were made in towns near the China-DPRK border. These reports suggest that trafficking of methamphetamine continues along the China-DPRK border and they raise the question of whether or not local DPRK officials might be aware or even complicit in the drug trade. There is no clear evidence of a central role for DPRK state institutions in selling methamphetamine or organizing the trafficking of methamphetamine. Evidence of direct DPRK state involvement in drug trafficking to
Taiwan and Japan emerged regularly in the past.

Reports of non-narcotics related acts of criminality in the DPRK suggest that DPRK tolerance of criminal behavior may exist on a larger, organized scale, even if no large-scale narcotics trafficking incidents involving the state itself have come to light. Press, industry, and law enforcement reports of DPRK links to large-scale counterfeit cigarette trafficking in the North Korean Export Processing Zone at Rajiin (or Najin) continue. It is unclear the extent to which DPRK authorities are complicit in this illegal activity, although it is likely that they are aware of it, given the relatively high-profile media reports. In addition, counterfeit $100 U.S. notes called “supernotes” (because they are so difficult to detect), continue to turn up in various countries, including in the United States. There are reports, for example, of supernote seizures in San Francisco and a very large supernote seizure in Pusan, South Korea during 2008 and 2009. Supernotes are uniquely associated with the DPRK, but it is not clear if recent seizures are notes which have been circulating for some time, or if they are recently-counterfeited new notes.

Agreements and Treaties. The DPRK is a party to the 1988 United Nations (UN) Drug Convention, the 1961 UN Single Convention as amended by the 1972 Protocol, and the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

Cultivation/Production. For many years, it has been alleged that poppies are cultivated in the DPRK, with the opium converted into heroin and then trafficked by state organs for profit. However, it has not been possible to confirm such illicit cultivation, and there has not been a heroin trafficking incident with a DPRK connection for many years. There are also several known factories in the DPRK that could produce very pure heroin and methamphetamine drugs, and there have been cases of large-scale smuggling of pure methamphetamine drugs from the DPRK to Japan and Taiwan as recently as 2002.

IV. U.S. Initiatives and Programs
The Department of State has no evidence to support a clear finding that DPRK state narco-trafficking has either stopped or is continuing. The absence of any seizures linked directly to DPRK state institutions, especially after a period in which seizures of very large quantities of drugs regularly occurred, does suggest considerably less state trafficking, and perhaps a complete end to it.

On the other hand, press reports of continuing seizures of methamphetamine in Asia, which can be traced back to an apparent DPRK source, suggest continuing manufacture and sale of DPRK methamphetamine to criminal traffickers. Large-scale trafficking of counterfeit cigarettes from the DPRK territory also continues and suggests that enforcement against notorious organized criminality in the DPRK is lax.

It is likely that the North Korean government has sponsored narcotics trafficking and other criminal activities in the past. The Department of State has insufficient information to confirm that the DPRK-state is no longer involved in manufacture and trafficking of illicit drugs, but if such activity persists, it is certainly on a much smaller scale.

Posted in Arms shipment, Counterfeiting, Drug smuggling, Illicit activities, Tobacco | Comments Closed

UN Says N. Korea’s Exposure to Toxic Chemicals Is Result of Isolation

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Voice of America
3/4/2009

Decades after most countries signed on to global bans of highly toxic chemical agents, North Korea continues to make widespread use of them — putting its people and those of other countries at risk. The North’s self-imposed isolation has kept people there ignorant for decades of the dangers they face. The United Nations is trying to remedy the problem.

United Nations officials say decades of isolating itself has left North Korea ignorant about some of the world’s most dangerous chemicals — and that it is taking a heavy toll.

Craig Boljkovac manages the chemical and waste program for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research.

“The environment-related problems that exist in North Korea, I just have to say right now, I think they’re much more serious than in many other countries in the world,” Boljkevac said.

A team of U.N. envoys managed by Boljkovac is in Pyongyang this week, teaching officials about decades-old global chemical bans Pyongyang ignored completely until just a few years ago. The world body is especially concerned by North Korea’s use of two chemicals, known as DDT and PCBs.

DDT was once a widely used insecticide. American soldiers even sprinkled it in their helmets to kill head lice during World War Two. Adverse health effects caused it to be banned in most countries — but not North Korea.

“So today in the world, DDT is only allowed one use, and that’s to kill the mosquito that carries malaria… But turn the clock back 50 years, and you have North Korea,” Boljkevac said. “They use DDT for everything.”

PCBs are a cooling agent, once critical in power grids to help keep electrical circuits from overheating. Other countries now use much safer chemical alternatives, but Boljkevac says his team has made some unsettling discoveries in the North.

“It looks like there is something on the order of 40,000 metric tons of PCBs in North Korea presently,” Boljkevac said. “And, all you need are a few molecules in your body to cause irreversible harm to your health, or that of your children.”

Boljkevac and his team were not allowed to make a visit to North Korea until 2005. He was struck by the lack of otherwise common chemical knowledge there.

“The look and the feelings of surprise from the officials that we deal with in North Korea, when they realized how harmful these chemicals were — I witnessed them personally, myself,” Boljkevac said. “They were quite stunned.”

Boljkevac says women are especially vulnerable to the effects of toxic chemicals, because they can be stored in fatty tissue and mother’s milk. He also says it is also impossible to confine the dangers of toxic chemical use to North Korean territory.

“North Korea’s problem with these chemicals is the world’s problem,” Boljkevac said. “Once they’re used and released into the environment, they travel all over the world. North Koreans cannot travel outside their country very easily or frequently — these chemicals can, and do, on a daily basis.”

Boljkevac says North Korea is providing his teams with full access and cooperation. He says his job is made easier by the fact that none of the chemicals he is seeking to eliminate have anything to do with weapons production.

Posted in Ethiopia, Labor conditions/wages, Manufacturing, UN, United Nations Institute for Training and Research | Comments Closed

North Korea: It’s the Economy, Stupid

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Nautilus Institute Policy Forum Online 10-015A
Aiden Foster-Carter
3/4/2010

Too many Kim Yong-ils

Korean names can set traps for the unwary. Amid a multitude of Kims, almost all unrelated, North Korea adds an extra twist. German speakers, and some others, tend to mispronounce the J in Kim Jong-il as a Y. Not only is this incorrect, but currently it can confuse; for North Korea’s Premier – head of the civilian Cabinet, as distinct from the Dear Leader who chairs the more powerful National Defence Commission (NDC) – is named Kim Yong-il.

To add to the confusion, another Kim Yong-il was until recently vice foreign minister (one of several), but in January became director of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK)’s international department: a post apparently vacant since 2007. As such, this Kim Yong-il met his Chinese counterpart Wang Jiarui, head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s international liaison department, when Wang visited Pyongyang in early February. Since his promotion, Kim Yong-il 2 (as it may be best to call him) has been reported as frequently at Kim Jong-il’s side. This suggests he may see far more of the Dear Leader than does anyone else involved in DPRK foreign policy, including the man hitherto thought to be the eminence grise on that front: first vice foreign minister Kang Sok-ju, who negotiated the 1994 Agreed Framework with the US. It was Kang whom the current US special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, demanded to meet when he visited Pyongyang in December, rather than the North’s main nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan: a more junior deputy foreign minister.

Or is Washington behind the curve? That Kim Yong-il 2 is the DPRK’s new foreign affairs head honcho seemed confirmed on February 23, when he turned up in Beijing and went right to the top: going straight into talks with President Hu Jintao and separately with Wang Jiarui. This flurry of activity suggests two possibilities. Either Kim Jong-il will soon visit China, as he is overdue to do; or North Korea may return to the nuclear Six Party Talks (6PT), which have not met in over a year. Or perhaps both, if we are especially fortunate.

If both Kim Yong-ils are now leading players, perhaps one of them could change his name? That is not a frivolous suggestion. Some DPRK officials do this, for no clear reason. Often the change is small, so this is not a case of deception. Thus Paek Nam-sun, DPRK foreign minister – meaning chief meeter and greeter rather than top negotiator – from 1998 until his death in 2007, was originally Paek Nam-jun. Ri Jong-hyok, who as vice-chairman of the Asia-Pacific Peace Committee (APPC) now handles relations with the South, was Ri Dong-hyok in the 1980s when this writer knew him as head of North Korea’s mission in Paris.

(For completeness, yet another Kim Yong-il was Kim Jong-il’s late half-brother. He died of liver cirrhosis in 2000 aged only 45 in Berlin, where he had a diplomatic posting tantamount to exile – as his elder brother Kim Pyong-il, the DPRK ambassador to Poland, still does.)

Jong and Yong both say sorry

The past month saw both Chairman and Premier Kim doing something almost unheard of in Pyongyang. Apparently they both said sorry, although some reports got the two muddled up.

On February 1 Rodong Sinmun, daily paper of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), reported Kim Jong-il as lamenting his failure to fulfil his late father Kim Il-sung’s pledge, to which he had also alluded shortly before on January 9, that all North Koreans would eat rice and meat soup (everyday fare for even the poorest South Korean, be it noted). This time Kim said: “What I should do now is feed the world’s greatest people with rice and let them eat their fill of bread and noodles. Let us all honour the oath we made before the Leader and help our people feed themselves without having to know broken rice [an inferior version]”.

Given Kim Jong-il’s own notoriety as gourmet and gourmand, his professed “compassion” for his less fortunate subjects’ deprivation may induce queasiness. Yet even this not-quite-apology glosses over the truth. Broken rice? They should be so lucky. As readers of Barbara Demick’s excellent and heartbreaking new book Nothing to Envy will know, rice of any kind – whole or broken – is a rare luxury for most North Koreans. In the late 1990s a million or so starved to death; even today most remain malnourished. One refugee who fled to China saw her first rice in years in the first house she came to – in a dog’s bowl. That is the true reality.

Worse, all this was and is avoidable: the result of stupid and vicious policies, not the natural disasters that the regime blames. The real cause was the government’s failure to adapt in the 1990s after Moscow abruptly pulled the plug on aid. This hurt other ex-Soviet client states too. Cuba went for tourism; Vietnam tried cautious reform; Mongolia sold minerals. North Korea, bizarrely, did nothing – except watch its old system break down and growth plunge.

In a speech at Kim Il-sung University in December 1996, when famine was seriously biting, Kim Jong-il lashed out at the WPK and uttered this petulant but very revealing whinge:

In this complex situation, I cannot solve all the problems while I have the duty of being in charge of practical economic projects as well as the overall economy, since I have to control important sectors such as the military and the party as well. If I concentrated only on the economy there would be irrecoverable damage to the revolution. The great leader told me when he was alive never to be involved in economic projects, just concentrate on the military and the party and leave economics to party functionaries. If I do delve into economics then I cannot run the party and the military effectively.

Evidently Bill Clinton’s famously apt watchword, which helped him win the presidency in 1992, had not breached North Korea’s thick walls and heads. It’s the economy, stupid! The paternal advice was dead wrong. (The full speech can be read on the much-missed Kimsoft website. Unsurprisingly it is not part of the DPRK’s official canon of the dear leader’s works, but the scholarly consensus is that it is genuine. A slightly different version appears here.)

Redenomination disaster

Mass starvation, you might hope, would prompt some soul-searching and fresh thinking. From mid-2002 North Korea did essay cautious market reforms, but recently it has tried to squash Pandora back in her box. The latest such crass effort, a currency redenomination that deliberately wiped out most people’s meagre savings, was discussed in December’s Update.

By all accounts this has backfired badly, sparking runaway inflation (which it was supposed to stanch) and even riots. Forced on the defensive, the regime has issued an unprecedented apology. This being North Korea, it has not done so publicly; there are limits. Nor, in 2010 as in 1996, is Kim Jong-il about to take the rap, despite some newswires confusing J with Y.

But reliable intelligence claims that on February 5 Premier Kim Yong-il called all leaders of neigbourhood groups (inminban) to Pyongyang. The lowest unit in the DPRK’s still tight system of socio-political control, each comprises 20-40 households. This suggests that over 10,000 people heard the premier say what no leader had ever said to them before: sorry. In his words: “I offer a sincere apology about the currency reform, as we pushed ahead with it without sufficient preparation and it caused a great pain to the people… We will do our best to stabilize people’s lives.” The audience’s reaction is not recorded.

The situation on the ground remains confused, but markets appear to be functioning again unhindered. Good Friends, a seemingly well-informed South Korean Buddhist NGO, said on February 18 that after examining a report on food shortages and conditions nationwide by the Office of Economic Policy Review, the WPK Central Committee issued an ‘Order for Absolutely No Regulation Regarding Foodstuffs’. All markets are to reopen as they were before recent government crackdowns, and under no circumstances must local authorities try to regulate food sales – “until central distribution is running smoothly.” There may be a sting in that tail, but for now this is a complete, humiliating government U-turn and climbdown.

This is an astonishing episode, which history may record as pivotal. If the leadership learns its lesson and finally accepts that the market economy is as ineluctable as gravity, then the DPRK might conceivably survive on a reconstituted economic base and social contract, like today’s China or Vietnam. But if Kim Jong-il (or whoever) keeps trying to square the circle, under the delusion that correct politics is a substitute for sound economics, there is no hope.

Sea shells

Relations with South Korea remain an odd blend of sabre-rattling and dialogue. Four times in the past month, starting on January 25 and most recently on February 19, the North has declared a series of no-sail zones for varied time periods. Some of these adjoin two ROK-held islands close to the Northern coast, Baengnyong and Daechong. For three days (January 27-29) the Korean People’s Army (KPA) fired volleys of artillery shells near the Northern Limit Line (NLL): the de facto western sea border since 1953, which the North rejects.

Though no shells actually crossed the NLL, on the first day the South called this provocative and fired back – but again only within its own waters south of the line. By late February, a Southern defence spokesman called the latest shelling “a routine situation that is part of the North’s winter military exercise”, adding that this may go on till the end of March. Routine or not, a report submitted to the ROK National Assembly’s Defence Committee on February 19 said Pyongyang has reinforced its military along the west coast of the peninsula and has strengthened military drills.

Kaesong and Kumgang remain unsettled

The shelling did not stop the Koreas talking about their two joint venture zones just north of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). But they got nowhere, beiing far apart on the agenda, format and venue for talks. On the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) – see last month’s Update for more details – the North suggested that the South’s issues – it wants smoother cross-border passage – were best left to military-level talks, which in the past have handled issues relating to the border and security. The South agreed, proposing February 23 at the border village of Panmunjom: the venue for all military meetings hitherto. The North then counter-proposed March 2, at Kaesong; but on February 22 the South said it will insist on Panmunjom, rather than set the precedent of holding a military meeting inside North Korea. With both venue and agenda still in dispute, the chances of progress on the substantive issues looks remote.

Mount Kumgang tours remain suspended

Separately, South Korea with some misgivings accepted the North’s request for talks on resuming tours to the Mount Kumgang resort, suspended since a Southern tourist was shot dead there in July 2008. At the talks held in Kaesong on February 8, North Korea asked for tours to restart from April 1. It breezily declared that the South’s three conditions – a probe into the shooting, efforts to ensure no repetition, and a cast-iron safety guarantee – had been met. But as the North well knows, the South’s key demand is to send in its own investigating team – which the North resolutely refuses. The Northern side proposed continuing the talks on February 12, but the South declined unless the North accepts their three conditions first.

More arms are interdicted

UN sanctions imposed last June after North Korea’s second nuclear test seem to be biting. In February South Africa told the Security Council that in November it inspected a ship headed for the Congo Republic (Congo-Brazzaville). The French owners reported suspicions about cargo they took on in Malaysia from a Chinese vessel. Seizing the containers, South Africa found that what the manifest called “spare parts of bulldozer” were in fact tank components. The shipping agent, and likely origin, is North Korean. China said it will investigate its own vessel’s role in the affair. UN resolution 1874 bans almost all DPRK weapons exports.

More ambiguously, on February 11 Thailand dropped charges against the crew of a plane seized in December and found to contain 35 tonnes of weapons from North Korea, including five crates of Manpads (man-portable air defence systems) which terrorists can use to shoot down aircraft. Next day all five were put on a flight to Almaty. Four are Kazakhs, and their government had asked that they be sent home to be tried. It will be dismaying if they are not.

Posted in 2002 Economic reforms, Arms shipment, Cabinet, Fiscal & monetary policy, Food, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), Illicit activities, International Department (KWP), Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), Military, Mt. Kumgang Tourist Special Zone, Special Economic Zones (Established before 2013), Worker's Party | Comments Closed

US doctors help DPRK open TB lab

Monday, March 1st, 2010

UPDATE: Some additional informtaion from Paul Costello:

Stanford researcher Sharon Perry PhD, an infectious disease specialist, has been working in North Korea with a team of American health specialists to develop the country’s first diagnostic laboratory to test drug-resistant tuberculosis. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as the hermit country is formally known, witnessed a resurgence of TB in the 1990s after famines plagued the country.

The TB Diagnostics Project is being led by the Bay Area TB Consortium, which Perry directs, and the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington nonprofit group working to strengthen global security. The program came about after a team of North Korean health officials visited California and met with Stanford and Bay Area tuberculosis experts in 2008.

It’s unusual for any outsiders to visit North Korea, but extremely rare for Americans. Safe to say that it’s an unprecedented partnership between U.S. researchers and health officials in North Korea. So far, Perry has ventured there three times and is soon to return for a fourth visit.

I spoke with Perry for a 1:2:1 podcast about her work in North Korea. It’s a candid, revealing interview that pulls back the curtain a bit from this most mysterious nation. I found it fascinating to hear Perry describe the work there and talk about collaborating with officials from the Ministry of Health on this significant health crisis for the nation. The porous nature of geographical borders and the ability of disease to spread easily from one country to another clearly illustrates that we’re one planet and all in this together.

ORIGINAL POST: According to the New York Times:

With help from scientists from Stanford University’s medical school, North Korea has developed its first laboratory capable of detecting drug-resistant tuberculosis, scientists involved in the project said last week.

Tuberculosis surged in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea during the famines of the 1990s. (Starvation suppresses the immune system, allowing latent infections to grow.) But the country cannot tell which cases are susceptible to which antibiotics, meaning more dangerous strains could push out strains that are easier to kill, as has happened in Russia and Peru.

The project began after John W. Lewis, an expert on Chinese politics at Stanford participating in informal diplomatic talks over North Korea’s nuclear threat, realized how serious a TB problem the country had. In 2008, doctors from North Korea’s health ministry visited experts in the San Francisco Bay area. Last month, a Stanford team began installing the new diagnostics lab at a hospital in the capital, Pyongyang.

The project “represents an unprecedented level of cooperation” between North Korean and American doctors, Professor Lewis said. It is supported by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit global security group led by former Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, and by Christian Friends of Korea, a humanitarian group.

Although it will soon be able to grow and test TB strains, North Korea right now has none of the more expensive antibiotics that attack drug-resistant TB, said Sharon Perry, the epidemiologist leading the Stanford team. Without outside help it will also run out of routine first-line antibiotics by July, she said.

Read the full article here:
Tuberculosis: North Korea Develops TB Laboratory With Help From American Doctors
New York Times
Donald McNeil, Jr.
3/1/2010

Posted in Disease prevention, Epidemics, Health care, International Aid, USA | Comments Closed