Pubdate: Mon, 03 Mar 2003
Source: Tri-City Herald (WA)
Copyright: 2003 Tri-City Herald
Contact:  http://www.tri-cityherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/459
Author: Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press

CASH-STRAPPED NORTH KOREA ACCUSED OF SUPPLYING JAPANESE ADDICTS

TOKYO - When the rusty fishing boat arrived
from China via North Korea for an offshore rendezvous, its crew got an
unwelcome surprise - it was boarded and searched by the Japanese Coast
Guard.

Peeling back a wooden panel to reveal a hidden compartment, officers
found 10 boxes containing more than 330 pounds of North Korean
methamphetamines, a potent stimulant that has long been the illegal
drug of choice for abusers in Japan.

In desperate need of money to pay for its huge army and expensive
nuclear and conventional weapons development programs - not to mention
feed its people - North Korea has found a lucrative source of funds in
Japanese drug addicts, experts contend.

"It's nothing less than state-organized crime - to feed the Japanese
stimulants and put them out of commission," opposition lawmaker
Takeshi Hidaka said at a recent hearing of parliament's national
security committee.

Japan's illegal stimulant market, estimated at more than $9.3 billion
annually, is an attractive target for North Korea. Largely cut off
from the rest of the world, North Korea's economy has been verging on
collapse for years, weighed down by the big military budget, limited
technology and little external trade.

Methamphetamines offer an easy fix. The drugs can be manufactured
relatively easily and cheaply in labs and transported to Japanese
users at little risk because Japan's long coastline is hard to guard.

The latest customs figures say 2,473 pounds of methamphetamines from
North Korea were seized in the three years through 2001. That was
second only to China, at 3,916 pounds.

"We believe North Korea is capable of mass producing top-quality
stimulants," said Naoto Takeuchi, an anti-narcotics official at the
National Police Agency. "There could be a government agency behind
it."

Because outsiders have very little access to North Korea, proving the
communist regime in Pyongyang is directly involved in the drug trade
is difficult.

"We have no evidence to prove Pyongyang's role in the smuggling,
although we believe it is possibly run systematically by a large
organization," said Minoru Hanai at the Japan Coast Guard's
International Criminal Investigation Division. "We don't know where
exactly in North Korea the drug factories are located."

The capture of the rusty smuggling boat off Kyushu just over a year
ago was typical of what Japan is up against.

Though all crew members aboard were Chinese, one testified that the
drugs were taken aboard in waters just west of Pyongyang. The drugs
were almost certainly to be sold to Japanese gangsters, who closely
control the domestic narcotics trade.

Tokyo has set up an anti-smuggling team to improve coordination
between the Coast Guard, the National Police Agency, the health
ministry and customs agents.

But because Japan and North Korea have no diplomatic relations, trying
to get the North's government - which denies the problem exists - to
crack down is impossible.

"Drug smuggling is a crucial source of income for North Korea," said
Toshio Miyatsuka, a North Korea specialist at Yamanashi Gakuin
University. "It's a major threat for Japan, and is definitely a
destabilizing factor for the Japanese society and in the region."

Miyatsuka said smuggling follows economic trends in
North Korea: When times are hard, it falls back more
heavily on the drug trade.

North Korea's smuggling began to surge when its economy turned worse
in the 1990s, he said, adding that profits are generally used in arms
development.

He said several expensive events last year in North Korea, including
leader Kim Jong Il's 60th birthday and the Arirang Festival, a
mass-games extravaganza intended to rival South Korea's co-hosting of
soccer's World Cup, also could have prompted a recent rise in drug
shipments.

Most of the trade seems to be taking place in the triangle of water in
the Yellow and East China seas between Japan, Taiwan and North Korea.

In the summer of 2001, Taiwanese authorities seized more than 154
pounds of heroin in those waters from a smuggling ring that had links
to North Korea.

Cracking down has a price.

Late in 2001, two Coast Guard sailors were wounded in a gun battle
with a suspicious vessel in the southwestern waters. Before the vessel
could be boarded, an explosion ripped through its hull and it sank.
All 15 aboard were presumed dead.

After salvaging the vessel last September, Japan determined it was a
North Korean spy ship and probably was the same boat caught smuggling
drugs in 1998 off the southwestern Japanese island of Shikoku.
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