H R N H R K N K Illicit: North Korea’S by Hard Evolving Currency Operations Earn Sheena Chestnut Greitens to North Illicit

H R N H R K N K Illicit: North to Sheena Chestnut Greitens Earn Operations Currency Evolving Hard by Korea’s Sheena Chestnut Greitens H R N K Committee for Human Rights in North Korea 1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 435 Washington, DC 20036 Phone: (202) 499-7970 Fax: (202) 758-2348 ILLICIT www.hrnk.org North Korea’s Evolving Operations to Earn Hard Currency Sheena Chestnut Greitens ILLICIT North Korea’s Evolving Operations to Earn Hard Currency H R N K Committee for Human Rights in North Korea 1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 435, Washington, DC 20036 (202) 499-7973 www.hrnk.org Copyright © 2014 by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 0985648039 Committee for Human Rights in North Korea 1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 435, Washington, DC 20036 (202) 499-7973 www.hrnk.org Illicit: North to Earn Operations Currency Evolving Hard Korea’s 2 Board of Directors 3 Roberta Cohen Co-Chair Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution Andrew Natsios Co-Chair Former Administrator, USAID Director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs and Executive Professor, The Bush School of Government & Public Service, Texas A&M University Suzanne Scholte Vice-Co-Chair President, Defense Forum Foundation Seoul Peace Prize Laureate Gordon Flake Vice-Co-Chair Chief Executive Officer, Perth USAsia Centre, The University of Western Australia Helen-Louise Hunter Secretary Attorney and Author John Despres Treasurer Consultant on International Financial & Strategic Affairs Morton Abramowitz Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation Jerome Cohen Co-Director, US-Asia Law Institute, NYU Law School Adjunct Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations Lisa Colacurcio Sheena Chestnut Greitens Advisor, Impact Investments Rabbi Abraham Cooper Associate Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center Jack David Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute Paula Dobriansky Chair, World Affairs Council of America Adjunct Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government Distinguished National Security Chair, U.S. Naval Academy Nicholas Eberstadt Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy, American Enterprise Institute Author Carl Gershman President, National Endowment for Democracy Steven Kahng President, Kahng Foundation David Kim Coordinator, The Asia Foundation Thai Lee President, SHI International Inc. Debra Liang-Fenton U.S. Institute of Peace Former Executive Director, Committee for Human Rights in North Korea Winston Lord Former Assistant Secretary for East Asia, Department of State Ambassador to China, Director of State, Department Policy Planning Staff, President of the Council on Foreign Relations and Chairman of The National Endowment for Democracy Marcus Noland Deputy Director and Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics Author Jacqueline Pak Illicit: North to Earn Operations Currency Evolving Hard Korea’s Professor, Cornell University Katrina Lantos Swett President and CEO, Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice Executive Director Greg Scarlatoiu 4 5 Table of Contents Foreword.............................................................................................................6 Chapter 1: Introduction and Front Matter......................................................9 I. Acknowledgements...........................................................................12 II. About the Author..............................................................................13 III. Dedication........................................................................................13 Chapter 2: A History of North Korea’s Involvement in Illicit Economic Activity..............................................................................................15 I. Introduction........................................................................................15 II. Drug Trafficking................................................................................16 III. Currency Counterfeiting................................................................24 IV. Other Illicit Activities......................................................................31 V. Conclusions ......................................................................................38 Chapter 3: Illicit Activity in North Korea’s Economy Since 2005..............43 I. Introduction........................................................................................43 II. A Survey of North Korea’s Hard Currency Income....................45 III. North Korean Involvement in Illicit Economic Activity After 2005...............................................................................................70 Regional and Peninsular Concentration of North Korea-Related Drug Activity...................................................71 The Identity of Drug Traffickers & the Regime’s Sheena Chestnut Greitens Changing Role..........................................................................72 The Rise of the Domestic Drug Trade....................................80 Domestic Production and Cross-Border Trade.....................90 Limited Evidence: Counterfeit Products and Counterfeit Currency................................................................99 Changes in North Korean Enforcement: Rhetoric and Arrests...............................................................................100 Chapter 4: Significance of North Korean Activities and Implications for Policy..........................................................................................................104 Foreword In Illicit: North Korea’s Evolving Operations to Earn Hard Currency, Sheena Chestnut Greitens provides a detailed and thoroughly researched account of the role of illicit activities in the North Korean economy. A central conclusion of Greitens’ analysis is that in the context of eroding state control over the licit aspects of the economy, illicit activities are also being “privatized” by North Korea’s elite. As HRNK Co-chair and former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios puts it, Greitens’ report provides “evidence that a market economy is developing in North Korea, in this case a criminal one that is feeding off the suffering and deprivation of the population. The report is about the absence of the rule of law on a grand scale in North Korea and in a way that criminal activity is now being privatized. It is very useful in understanding the perverse transformation of the country going on right now.” The ongoing economic transformation has been happening not as the result of top-down reform, but as the consequence of the bottom-up development of informal, “black” markets established as survival mech- anisms. While most North Koreans have continued to be impoverished, others have thrived. Success in the gray zone where the centrally-planned, tightly controlled and the semi-private economic activity converge has depended on one’s loyalty-based social classification or on receiving the protection of those of the “core class.” Association with the Kim regime has provided a path to acquiring wealth and status. Illicit: North to Earn Operations Currency Evolving Hard Korea’s As evidenced in the report by Greitens, in recent years, illicit economic activity has succeeded outside regime controls. In the aftermath of the near collapse of North Korea’s Public Distribution System (PDS), most, if not all of those involved in both centrally-directed and semi-private overseas or domestic illicit activities have benefitted substantially. Whether undertaken with central guidance or in a quasi-private setting, illicit activities such as illegal drug production and trafficking, foreign currency counterfeiting and distribution, or cigarette counterfeiting have 6 7 continued and serve to enrich those engaged and often the regime through loyalty taxes. North Korea poses a greater challenge than fragile or fail- ing nations, since state assets such as currency printing presses have been used in the execution of such operations. Even foreign currency operations that appear legitimate on the surface are in a gray area, just as, for example, North Korea’s extractive industry supply chain is tainted by the use of prison and military labor, and the workers it officially sends overseas face appalling working conditions. Under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, the fundamental strategic objective of North Korea’s regime has stayed the same: its own pres- ervation, at any cost. The methods the regime has employed to stay in power have persisted: conducting relentless surveillance and control of its people; punishing those considered disloyal; brainwashing every North Korean from an early age; and severely restricting the inflow and outflow of information across the borders of North Korea. But there are also forces eroding the Kim regime’s grip on power, all having arisen in the aftermath of the famine that killed perhaps one million citizens in the 1990s: small, informal markets developed as a survival mechanism; information that penetrates North Korea’s firewall through foreign radio broadcasting and mobile media storage devices sold on North Korea’s black markets; remit- tances and phone calls from many of the 27,000 North Koreans now living in South Korea; and the slow, but steady inroads underground Christianity is making. If, as Greitens indicates, the development of semi-private entre- preneurship has resulted in a gap between regime and society, at least in Sheena Chestnut

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