Pubdate: Wed, 23 Mar 2005
Source: Stars and Stripes - Pacific Edition (Asia)
Copyright: 2005 Stars and Stripes
Contact:  http://www.estripes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1511
Note: LTEs require name, APO address and phone number.
Author: Joseph Giordono

U.S. OFFICIALS: NORTH KOREA IS LIKELY A STATE SPONSOR OF DRUG TRAFFICKING

SEOUL  In addition to the military threat it poses, North Korea is likely a 
state sponsor of drug trafficking, the U.S. State Department said in its 
annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.

On at least two occasions in 2004, the report said, North Korean diplomats 
were arrested after using their positions for drug smuggling. In one 
instance, Egyptian authorities arrested two North Korean diplomats with 
150,000 tablets of a drug normally used to treat seizures. And in December 
2004, Turkish officials arrested two North Korean diplomats and charged the 
men with smuggling more than $7 million worth of an illegal synthetic drug.

Though defector statements and various reports have linked the government 
to illicit drugs, the closed nature of North Korean society makes it 
impossible so far to confirm the link.

Numerous instances of North Korean drug trafficking and trade in copyright 
products, and other criminal behavior by North Korean officials, in many 
cases using valuable state assets, such as military-type patrol boats, has 
caused many observers and the Department to come to the view that it is 
likely, though not certain that the North Korean Government sponsors such 
illegal behavior as a way to earn foreign currency for the state and for 
its leaders, the U.S. report reads.

It is impossible to say with certainty that such individuals were acting 
under the instructions of their government, and were thus engaged in state 
trading of narcotics.

But, the report found, there have been numerous indications that the North 
Korean government has ordered some of its residents to grow opium plants to 
be processed into heroin.

North Korean defectors and informants report that large-scale opium poppy 
cultivation and production of heroin and methamphetamine occurs, the report 
read.

The government then engaged in drug trafficking to earn large sums of 
foreign currency unavailable to the regime through legal transactions. 
Similar reports by defectors have not been conclusively verified by 
independent sources. Defector statements however, are consistent over 
years, and occur in the context of multiple narcotics seizures linked to 
North Korea.
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