North Korea
2005 INCSR
International Narcotics Control Strategy Report - 2005
Released by the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs
March 2005
North Korea
I. Summary
For decades, North Koreans have been apprehended trafficking in narcotics and engaged in other forms of criminal behavior, including passing counterfeit U.S. currency and trade in copyright products. 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. This report discusses instances of North Korean involvement in drug trafficking during 2004.
II. Status of Country
On two occasions in 2004 North Korean diplomats were arrested for involvement in narcotics smuggling. In June, Egyptian law enforcement authorities detained two North Korean diplomats working in the Commercial Office at the North Korean Embassy in Egypt for attempting to deliver 150,000 tablets of Clonazipam. Clonazipam is a Schedule IV benzodiazepine used to treat seizures and anxiety. Both North Korean diplomats were expelled from Egypt.
In December, Turkish authorities arrested two North Korean diplomats suspected of smuggling synthetic drugs destined for Arab markets. The diplomats, assigned to North Korea’s Embassy in Bulgaria, were caught in a drug raid in Turkey and found to be carrying over half a million Captagon tablets. The Captagon, a synthetic drug taken as an aphrodisiac, had a "street value", i.e., illicit market value, of seven million dollars. The North Korean diplomats were returned to Bulgaria, but were expelled by the Bulgarian government.
These two incidents are the first to come to light in several years involving DPRK officials stationed abroad at embassies caught smuggling narcotics. 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. Neither Captagon, an amphetamine-type stimulant, nor Clonazipam, a central nervous system depressant, has been associated with instances of DPRK trafficking in the past.
DPRK officials have ascribed past instances of official misconduct to the individuals involved, and stated that these individuals would be punished in the DPRK for their crimes. There is no information available indicating if the DPRK diplomats involved in these two drug smuggling incidents were, in fact, punished upon their return to North Korea.
North Korean defectors and informants report that large-scale opium poppy cultivation and production of heroin and methamphetamine occurs in the DPRK. A defector identified as a former North Korean high-level government official wrote in a February 2004 "Jamestown Review" article that poppy cultivation and heroin and methamphetamine production were conducted in North Korea by order of the regime. The government then engaged in drug trafficking to earn large sums of foreign currency unavailable to the regime through legal transactions. This article and 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.
There were also reports in 2004 of more organized smuggling of heroin along the DPRK’s border with China. Traffickers living in North Korea reportedly contacted individuals in China to act as heroin couriers ("drug mules"). It is unclear whether the heroin in question was produced in the DPRK. North Korean and Chinese border guards were reportedly complicit, since they received payments from the traffickers. The presence of North Korean residents in China might well encourage this type of trafficking. Regular refugee traffic and other border trade, often facilitated by bribes, opens the way to drug smuggling. There is also other evidence of close cooperation between Chinese criminals and North Korean criminals in heroin and methamphetamine smuggling to foreign markets.
In addition, several drug traffickers arrested for smuggling methamphetamine into South Korea over the last year have indicated to authorities that the drugs originated from North Korea and were transshipped through China. Methamphetamine is the drug of choice for South Koreans.
There were no seizures of methamphetamines in Japan during 2004 linked to North Korea. As much as 30 percent to 40 percent of methamphetamines seized in Japan in past years have been linked by Japanese enforcement officials to the DPRK. The origin of heroin and methamphetamine seized on Taiwan during 2004, where DPRK-linked drugs have been seized in the past, generally was ascribed to domestic manufacture, to South East Asia or to China, not to sources in the DPRK. The street price for drugs did not change significantly in either Japan or Taiwan, so if past shipments from the DPRK stopped, they were replaced by traffickers operating elsewhere.
The "Pong-Su" incident in Australia in 2003 drew worldwide attention to the possibility of DPRK state trading of drugs. The "Pong Su" is a sea-going cargo vessel, owned by a North Korean enterprise, which was seized in Australia in mid-April 2003 after reportedly delivering a large quantity of pure heroin to accomplices on shore. The "Pong Su" case trial began in late January in Australia and is expected to continue for at least four to five months. The North Korean Captain of the "Pong Su", and other senior officers, will face prosecution for complicity in smuggling the heroin to Australia, and a North Korean communist "Party Secretary" found aboard the "Pong Su", will also face prosecution for complicity in the smuggling, in accordance with evidence developed during an investigation by the Australian Crime Commission. The Pong Su itself will be disposed of later this year after remaining in Australian custody since it was seized in the wake of the smuggling incident. During the time it was held, government investigators and prosecutors, as well as defense counsel have had access to the vessel in preparing their respective cases.
Beyond the incidents described above, no additional information about DPRK-linked drug trafficking entered the public record during 2004. As the Department of State noted in its report on North Korea in the March 2004 INCSR, the cumulative impact of drug smuggling incidents linked to North Korea over years in a context of other admitted DPRK state-directed criminal activity, such as the Japanese kidnapping incidents, support the Department’s conclusion that it is likely, though not certain that the DPRK is state trading narcotics. There is also strong reason to believe that methamphetamine and heroin are manufactured in North Korea as a result of the same state-directed conspiracy behind trafficking. The United States will continue to monitor developments in North Korea to test the validity of the judgment that drugs are probably being trafficked under the guidance of the state, and to see if evidence emerges confirming manufacture of heroin and methamphetamine.