Bureau 39

The latest issue of Time has an eye-opening piece about the North Korean government's criminal rackets, including counterfeiting and drug production:

Through a state-owned conglomerate called Daesong, Bureau 39 oversees export businesses owned and run by the North Korean government--mainly textile and other light-manufacturing factories and some mines. But Bureau 39 also houses another, shadowy directorate that oversees illicit enterprises ranging from drug trafficking to money laundering, claim a dozen current and former government officials in the U.S. and East Asia as well as academic researchers and private-sector investigators interviewed by TIME. Those illegal activities earn, by some estimates--including one by the State Department's former point man on the issue--about $1 billion a year for the senior Pyongyang leadership. How important is that business to the regime? Consider that in 2005, all of North Korea's legitimate exports totaled $1.7 billion, according to a CIA estimate.

The article quotes one expert who calls North Korea a "Sopranos State," but I suspect a country actually run by the Sopranos would be a much more pleasant place to live.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at July 19, 2007 01:15 PM