It's hard to keep up with Claudia Rosett. Today she pops up at the Weekly Standard with Cash for Kim, a look at the criminal enterprise which is the Kim regime in North Korea:
For years, the North Korean state has been raking in money from the illicit, international sale of drugs, ranging from heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines to fake Viagra. A North Korean defector testified to Congress in 2003 that the mass production and sale of narcotics was official state policy. In the tightly controlled North Korean state, factories turning out fake pharmaceuticals are part of Kim's plan. Some of these drugs have been peddled out of North Korean embassies by official staff. According to congressional research reports, this has resulted in more than 50 verifiable drug busts in more than 20 countries, most of them since Kim Jong Il took over from his late father in 1994.North Korea's illicit activities also include gunrunning, illegal fishing, a dash of alleged insurance fraud, and the counterfeiting of cigarettes and U.S. currency.
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Estimates of Pyongyang's earnings from such enterprises vary widely. Analysts suggest that for North Korea, particular illicit enterprises go in and out of vogue. Kim's regime tends to focus on one area until it runs into too much heat or some other difficulty, and then the focus tilts to a different racket. For instance, heroin was big in the early 1990s. Then floods in 1995 and 1996 wrecked the poppy crops. The regime adapted by manufacturing and exporting more methamphetamines. (This was during the same period in which the regime's state rationing system left more than a million North Koreans to starve to death.) Poppies later made a comeback that lasted until 2003, when a North Korean ship, the Pong Su, carrying some 275 pounds of pure heroin, was seized off Australia.
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Posted by dan at February 10, 2007 12:55 AM