NORTH KOREA UPDATE: PETER BROOKES
Peter Brookes' latest on North Korea (from Town Hall):
North Korea has become a gangster nation, pocketing $700 million to $1 billion a year from counterfeiting of U.S. greenbacks, trafficking illicit narcotics, smuggling contraband smokes and even peddling knockoff Viagra, according to U.S. government estimates.
"North Korea is the only government in the world today that can be identified as being actively involved in directing crime as a central part of its national economic strategy and foreign policy," says David Asher, until recently a State Department adviser on Asia.
Pyongyang's global criminal cabal - including Chinese gangs, Russian mafia, Japanese yakuza and an IRA politico - produces a tidy little slush fund for "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, which shamefully equals the country's legitimate export income.
--read the rest.
North Korea has become a gangster nation, pocketing $700 million to $1 billion a year from counterfeiting of U.S. greenbacks, trafficking illicit narcotics, smuggling contraband smokes and even peddling knockoff Viagra, according to U.S. government estimates.
"North Korea is the only government in the world today that can be identified as being actively involved in directing crime as a central part of its national economic strategy and foreign policy," says David Asher, until recently a State Department adviser on Asia.
Pyongyang's global criminal cabal - including Chinese gangs, Russian mafia, Japanese yakuza and an IRA politico - produces a tidy little slush fund for "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, which shamefully equals the country's legitimate export income.
--read the rest.
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