Sunday, March 06, 2005
US suspects N Korea involved in drug trade
WASHINGTON: The United States on Friday said the North Korean government was likely involved in drug trafficking and that Washington would keep an eye out for evidence to confirm its suspicions.
In its annual global report on drug smuggling, the US State Department said North Korean official have participated in criminal behavior, including drug trafficking, and used government assets such as military-type patrol boats for their crimes.
Such incidents have “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 report said. In June, two North Korean diplomats were arrested in Egypt for “attempting to deliver 150,000 tablets of Clonazipam,” a drug used to treat seizures and anxiety, according to the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.
Both diplomats were expelled from Egypt. In December, Turkish authorities arrested two North Korean diplomats suspected of smuggling synthetic drugs destined for Arab markets, the report said.
The two diplomats, who worked at North Korea’s embassy in Bulgaria, were caught in a drug raid with “over half a million Captagon tablets,” it said.
The synthetic drug, which is taken as an aphrodisiac, had a seven-million-dollar street value, the report said. The diplomats were sent back to Bulgaria, whose government expelled them.
The report said it was impossible to determine whether the diplomats were working at the behest of the North Korean government.
North Korean defectors and informants report that large-scale opium poppy cultivation and production of heroin and methamphetamine occurs in North Korea, according to the State Department.
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