Lawmaker says half of illegal drugs here are produced in NK
By Kim Young-jin
Is the cash-strapped North Korean regime fueling the illicit drugs trade in the South?
That is the claim being made by Rep. Yoon Sang-hyun of the ruling Saenuri Party, who estimated earlier this week that over half of illegal drugs on the local market are produced in the North after arriving by way of traffickers operating in China.
Yoon, who sits on the National Assembly Foreign Affairs, Trade and Unification Committee, said trafficking along the North Korea-China border was increasing and that some 57 percent of the 8,200 grams of foreign-produced methamphetamines seized in the South in 2010 came from China. “It is estimated that a large part of that comes from the North,” he said.
“The imported drugs not only directly harm people in South Korea and China, but they are a deadly threat to the social fabric.”
The North has long been known as a source of narcotics trafficking around the world.
If the prevalence estimated by Yoon holds true, the infiltration of the drugs not only complicates matters for police but could also represents the influence of Pyongyang’s shady security apparatus in the South at a time of lingering tension.
Yoon pinpointed the notorious Office 39 of Pyongyang’s ruling Workers’ Party, which specializes in a range of illicit economic activity to support the regime, as overseeing the operations and that key sections of the army had been charged with production and distribution.
The bureau is regarded as a slush fund creator for the late ruler Kim Jong-il and a key financial support system for Pyongyang’s elite.
He said the three provinces of Northeast China ㅡ Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang ㅡ had become hotbeds for trafficking the North’s drugs. Reports say it is facilitated by groups from both Koreas as well as China that often work together.
It is not the first time the communist state has been fingered for such operations.
The United States, which in 2010 blacklisted Office 39 as one of several North Korean entities to come under new sanctions for illegal activities, says the bureau produces not only methamphetamine but also heroin through its cultivation of poppy farms. It has also attempted to procure and transfer luxury goods to the North, heavily sanctioned over its nuclear weapons program.
The industry apparently takes a human toll as well. A report by the Brookings Institution said the number of registered drug addicts in the city of Yanji rose from 44 20 years ago to some 2,100 in 2010.
Testimony from defectors and North Koreans traveling in China suggest that drug use is problematic in the North as well, where people reportedly use methamphetamine in lieu of expensive medicine, even to cope with conditions such as cancer.
The Brookings report warned that increased drug abuse as a result of the trade could establish greater problems for Northeast Asia by attracting international trafficking organizations and greater drug flows in the region, possibly via the China-Russia border.
Rep. Yoon called on Seoul and Beijing to quickly step up coordinated efforts to “cut off these North Korean crimes at the source.”
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