The year was 2004 and a container ship called
the “Ever Unique” made its last stop at the port of Newark in the U.S. after leaving
from China. On this particular day, F.B.I. and Secret
Service agents were lying in wait, believing that some containers on this ship might be
carrying something of interest. They were right, but what they’d find was
more than they had bargained for. Under boxes filled with an array of plastic
toys they discovered secret compartments that contained hard cash, except the money was
only in $100 bills. The notes they beheld were flawless, faultless,
and to anyone but an expert gifted with the right technology, those notes were just as
good as the real thing. But they weren’t the real thing, they were
counterfeits. Almost perfect counterfeits. Where had they come from? Who had invested the time and money to create
such flawless notes? The authorities understood immediately that
to make such consummate currency you’d need very advanced technology. These were obviously by no means your run
of the mill counterfeit notes. The experts who looked at them couldn’t
believe their eyes. This was a huge problem. The U.S., being what we call the “world’s
currency”, is very, very difficult to recreate perfectly, but someone had done it. When the authorities took these bills to forensic
analysts, what those analysts saw before them was the perfect composition of fibers used
in the real bills. They even commented that the engravings were
possibly of a better quality than those created by the United States Bureau of Engraving and
Printing. The fakes were in one sense even better than
the real thing. They came up with a new name for these bills,
and that was the “supernote”... almost perfect imitations that would fool just about
anyone, from the man in the street to the teller at the bank. Hell, if you could create enough of these
things you could spend until your heart's content and have little fear about getting
caught. Since the discovery of the first super 100
dollar bills, millions more have been found on container ships with loads destined for
the USA. But who was making these supernotes? Following the discovery, investigators in
the U.S. started a series of operations such as “Royal Charm” and “Smoking Dragon”.
at first thinking the counterfeits were being made by powerful gangs originating in Asia. Unlike many organized crime outfits that traffic
drugs and guns in the West, Asian gangs tend to work quietly and share a high degree of
sophistication. But when the investigations started paying
off and links to these gangs were arrested on American soil, the authorities shocked
the world. They said that it wasn’t the networks of
organized crime that were actually making the fake money…it was the government of
North Korea. The gangs, they merely spread the money around. In no time at all, North Korea denied this
accusation, but the U.S. said that the evidence they had was more than sufficient. North Korea was a money-making machine, they
said, and the technologies the country used were second to none. What ensued was a bank in Macau called “Banco
Delta Asia” being shut down, and with it the accounts of some of North Korea’s ruling
elites. The bank was accused of taking counterfeit
cash and then laundering it in the world of real money. This shady kind of business was all run through
something called Room 39, North Korea’s department of dark money. Or at least that’s where all of the evidence
pointed to- or what evidence was available. Was this such a big deal at the time, seeing
as the world was watching in fear as their TVs told them that the secret nation was hellbent
on creating weapons that could bring us all down? The answer is yes, it was a really big deal,
with some U.S. officials calling it an “act of war.” You see, when counterfeiters are merely street
level hustlers doing a bad job recreating cash, or even organized crime giving it a
shot, it’s not seen as such a large threat. People have been counterfeiting cash for many
years, since the time when you could have been hanged, drawn and quartered for trying
to fake the “king's coinage.” But one state doing it against another…that
could be said to be a hostile act under international laws. The U.S. came right out and said that by counterfeiting
another country’s currency you are in no uncertain terms a “threat to the American
people.” As we said, the branch of the North Korean
government responsible for such criminal enterprises is known as Room 39, or Office 39, or Bureau
39…It’s all the same thing. How do we know this entity exists since North
Korea isn’t exactly giving tours to U.S. officials and investigators and showing them
exactly how things are run? The answer is high-ranking North Korean defectors. Some of these folks have come out and said
the most unbelievable things. Word on the street is that Room 38 deals with
the cash made by Room 39. Room 35, though, that’s in a league of its
own. That’s the office that focuses on assassinations
and kidnappings. There are also reports that Room 39 is behind
the production of illegal drugs on an industrial scale. We are talking meth labs that would impress
the fictional Walter White. The drugs can be made in North Korea under
the eye of the government and then sold around the world for those American dollars the country
likes so much. Since North Korea can’t really make money
on the international market due to sanctions, one way to make dollars is to go through the
black market. Room 39, if you like, is the back market HQ
for North Korea. While many folks seem to believe the majority
of the world’s narcotics come from South America and through Mexico, what’s often
under looked and perhaps not “Netflixable” enough, is the fact that many of the world’s
drugs are actually coming out of Asia. All kinds of drugs can be made in countries
such as North Korea, or in parts of Myanmar, and then through Asian gangs, shipped around
the world. Methamphetamine labs have been a great source
of income for North Korea during harsh international sanctions. But ice isn’t the only order of the day…it’s
reported that the country also has many poppy fields and has for a long time. The raw opium is then turned into heroin,
and that heroin finds its way into Asian countries and subsequently to North America and Europe. If the country wasn’t so closed off, we
might have seen a “Narcos: North Korea” show. Experts writing about the country tell us
that the meth production began not as a money-spinner, but as a way to keep North Korean soldiers
alert and awake. No surprise there…there isn’t a military
in the world that hasn’t given its troops some kind of speed at one time or another. In the 1990s the country hit a wall when there
was a very bad opium crop harvest and North Korea saw dope profits fall drastically. Officials who were hit hard by this, put their
heads together and said why not start using state facilities and start making methamphetamine
and trafficking it abroad. Meth isn’t ever prey to a bad harvest, and
the officials agreed to knock up some labs under state-owned companies and then get in
touch with various Asian criminal networks in China, Myanmar and Thailand. Think about it…if North Korea can produce
the best banknotes that forensic analysts have ever seen, what kind of meth could the
country make? Perhaps Kim Jong-un and his cronies are Breaking
Bad on a scale that would literally blow our minds. But North Korea isn’t immune to its own
drug problems. One expert said recently the government has
cracked down on meth production, since the country now faces a meth epidemic. It isn’t that the government was selling
it to its own people, but that some North Korean citizens had created their own labs. Private enterprises were creating the meth
and then paying bribes to state officials so they could keep producing. Those officials were paying other officials
and in the end everyone turned a blind eye and got paid. If the bribe wasn’t paid, as happened in
2019 when a woman was given a prison sentence of 10-15 years, you went straight to jail. The “donju”, which means the elites or
masters of money, will get paid by these private drug dealers and traffickers. If there is a crackdown, according to some
sources in North Korea, any donju doing deals with the public will be notified before the
bust. If that sounds confusing to you, what some
inside media tell us is that the government isn’t happy about the average citizen getting
in on the drugs business, and so they are being taken out. However, if they are connected and pay their
way in bribes, officials are happy to look the other way. So who pushes North Korea’s dope? The answer might surprise you. Scores of trade officials and North Korean
diplomats have been arrested for trying to sell NK-made medicinal amphetamines and benzodiazepines
worth millions of dollars abroad. This kind of thing goes back many years, and
each time the North Korean government has said the diplomats went rogue...that they
weren’t giving the profits back to powers that be. No one really believed this, of course. One defector said in 2018 that Room 39 was
about one thing and one thing only, and that is to supply the great leader of the country
and his cronies with money. He called the money raised a, “revolutionary
fund.” He said some of the exports controlled by
this room are in fact legal, but of the $639 million to the $2.5 billion made each year,
a lot of the income is from illicit activities. This has been called a royal slush fund, and
if you don’t know what a slush fund is, it’s what you might call dark money earned
by corrupt means. He said he worked for the Kumgang trading
company, which dealt in gold, gemstones and ginseng. Because there are sanctions on North Korea,
part of his job was to smuggle the products across the border into China and from there
it would reach the international market. That’s hardly the crime of the century,
but defectors have also said that another product being smuggled out of the country
is weapons. Those weapons might make their way to organized
crime or countries devastated by internal conflict. North Korean weapons have ended up in countries
in Africa, South America, and the Middle East. Another type of crime North Korea engages
in might surprise you. Insurance fraud hasn’t been talked about
very much in the media. North Korea’s Room 39 is said to have raked
in hundreds of millions of dollars from international companies working as reinsurers, which means
offering protection for insurance companies. North Korea has denied it, but investigators
have said that the country has made fraudulent claims on a helicopter crash, two train crashes
and a ferry sinking. Other dubious claims have been related to
crop failures, mining accidents, fires and floods. The state-owned Korea National Insurance Corporation
will initially take the risk, but then that is passed on to international reinsurers from
various countries in the world. Reinsurers in Europe, India and Egypt were
all involved in the payout for that helicopter crash, which some investigators say was staged. An expert who spoke some years after the crash
said one lesson had been learned, and that was, “Never agree to have disputes decided
in a North Korea court and never reinsure KNIC.” So if the North Korean people are starving,
where does all this money go? While a lot of this cash coming out of Room
39 goes towards the military and the country’s nuclear program, most of it fills the pockets
of the country’s leaders and very little goes to the people who need it most- North
Korea’s citizens. A lot goes to the super-rich of North Korea,
like when the Italian government blocked the sale of two luxury yachts to North Korea in
2009. Room 39 was behind the purchase, and the boats
were worth more than $15 million. Reports have also surfaced that through this
office, North Korea has illegally imported hundreds of luxury cars, vans and other vehicles. As a report stated in 2010, “Criminal proceeds
are distributed to members of the North Korean elite (including senior officers of the armed
forces); are used to support Kim Jong-Il’s personal lifestyle; and are invested in its
military apparatus.” But for a country most consider technologically
backwards, North Korea has another criminal surprise waiting for you. Reports in 2019 stated that North Korea’s
hackers stole around two billion dollars from banks and cryptocurrency exchanges in 17 different
countries. Hacking might have become the country’s
newest and most profitable way of making money, and all without the risk of being stopped
by customs officials and having their product confiscated. By now, it’s sure that North Korea has made
far more than the two billion dollars originally stated, making hacking extremely lucrative
for North Korean cyber whizzes. What will come out of Room 39 next we don’t
know, but we expect more nefarious cyber activity to be on the cards. North Korea has tried a lot of things, including
the illegal export of fake Marlboro cigarettes and its own version of Viagra, but it’s
likely that the hacking game will be the way ahead as long as there are sanctions on the
country. As for the meth and the opiates, there will
always be a market for that as long as North Korea can keep getting it through the large
border with China. As one defector put it, “The only way to
earn hard currency is by drugs.” Time has proven him wrong, and now North Korea’s
criminal enterprises exist in both the real and the cyberworld. Still, don’t be surprised if some of the
drugs on the streets in the USA and elsewhere start coming with the label, “Proudly Made
In North Korea”. Now you need to watch this video, “What
It Is REALLY Like Living In North Korea?”. Or watch this, “A Day in the Life of North
Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un.”
