The Underworld Podcast - North Korea's Meth Trafficking: The Hermit Narco-Kingdom

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

When a bizarre group of international gangsters shook on a massive meth deal with a DEA agent in Bangkok, Thailand eight years ago, it kicked off a manhunt ensnaring Hong Kong Triads, Outlaws bikers and an ex-US Army sniper’s band of contract killers. But the bust also shone a light on the shady drug network of North Korea, part of a crime machine fuelling the world’s maddest dictatorship. This is the story of how a war-torn Hermit Kingdom became a narco-trafficking, cash-counterfeiting, pimping Mafia state. An Underworld Classic Merch: https://underworldpodcast.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Call it compliance, or call it, Compliance. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to VANTA.com slash com. January 2013, Bangkok, Thailand, and a drug deal is going down. On one side, a Hong Kong triad syndicate, with a big claim. There's a giant stash of methamphetamine,

highest grade you can imagine, and it's hidden somewhere in the Philippines. The would-be client nods approvingly. He's a DEA agent, and the resulting bust is going to involve British narcos in Thailand, an outlawed biker gang, one of the world's most infamous drug lords, and a crazy team of ex-US army snipers in the midst of an assassination plot in Liberia. What this deadly band of misfits has in common, apart from the tons of drugs, of course, is one of the world's maddest countries, where a shady government agency has become one of the biggest narco-traffickers on earth, Feeding the desperate regime of the world's only communist king.

This is the nuclear bomb that meth built. Welcome to the underworld podcast. Yeah, we're doing a North Korea episode. Between that and your Cuba show last week, we really be getting that tanky hate. I think I've been wanting to do this show pretty much as we started out, which is pretty much a year now, by the way. I'm your host, Sean Williams. I'm here with Danny Gold.

What are you being up to? You're going to come to Berlin anytime soon? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm kind of, I'm blown away by that intro, man. Like I'm genuinely excited to learn more and I've got no idea about any of this. Yeah, this stuff is actually fully insane. I don't know how it even exists. But before we get into the story, yeah, we've got Patreon guys. We've got our merch is backup stuff.

We've got YouTube. We've got bonus stuff flying up at the moment. And we're kind of in the swing of it. And we need you guys to keep us going, really. So keep listening, liking. give us five-star ratings, all that kind of stuff. And you know, another thing we do on this show is we put all our scripts and reading lists on the Patreon, which I think for this particular episode is really useful because there's like so much rubbish out there about North Korea.

So many of those boring, like look inside Pyongyang documentaries. It's basically just some journalists on holiday getting shown around dull crap talking to minders. I can't believe any editors commission that stuff anymore. I feel like there's an NDA in my past. that doesn't allow me to say my true feelings on, you know, one or two of those docs right now. Is this where we, like, get the Dennis Rodman reference in early, or that can come later down? This is where the lawyers delete a couple of comments by me. Cool. All right.

I mean, I've watched some really great films and docos, like, putting this one together, and it's all up there on the Patreon guys. We're, like, an organized crime substack, but we're cheaper. There's none of the terrible politics, like, price. of a coffee guys log on sign up yeah and then people i mean you know every now and then we get like these comments that that whine about uh sources or like um yeah accuse us of like really not doing any research but if you look at the like there's pages and pages of articles and books and all that sort of stuff so um yeah take a sign up take a look let's get it's get it going on to north korean

why this focuses today's story on like the little king the little rocket man or whatever Trump called him. The story of how North Korea became a narco state actually begins over a century ago with a princess, Diokiae, and I know I'll be getting that name wrong, Diokie, is born in 1912. She's the daughter of King Gojong of Korea. Now, Korea has been a Japanese colony for two years already at this point. I didn't know much about this before this show, actually. And the Imperial Empire across the sea is just ramping up a cultural genocide.

and this is according to History.com a quote schools and universities forbade speaking Korean and emphasised manual labour and loyalty to the emperor. Public places adopted Japanese too and an edict to make films in Japanese soon followed. It also became a crime to teach history from non-approved texts and authorities burned

over 200,000 Korean historical documents essentially wiping out the historical memory of Korea. That's like in an important question. quote an important thing to cover. So I'm going to forgive you for using fucking history.com as your source. Oh, thank you. That's so gracious. And Japan at this time,

it also exports Korean men as slave laborers in the imperial empire and women as sex slave, which is still controversially and somehow known as comfort women in Japan. Japan never copse enough stick for basically being a giant monoculture effin estate. I guess people just like anime or something?

Yeah, I mean, let's not even get started on World War II, because that'll... Yeah, that'll take a long time, but anyway, keep moving. Well, we'll get to that in a minute, but, yeah, around, like all this time, Princess Diokiae is being used as this kind of figurehead, a puppet, and her life's just becoming miserable. In 1925, her father the king dies, and she shipped off to Japan herself. Four years later, her mother dies, and the princess spirals into depression, refuses to eat, gets dementia. Yeah, she's got... dementia as a teenager. That's how stressed this kid is. She's wed to a Japanese noble and has a kid in 1932. She's basically just in a golden cage and getting worse and worse. And as Korean partisans are

fighting a losing battle against Japan, they turn on her themselves as a national traitor. Now, I'm telling this story to show just how bad things are in Korea when Japan is invading Manchura in early 1930s, one of the moves that's going to kick off the Second World War. And like we went over in our big two-part are on the Yakuza, opium is a massive part of Japan's economy in its colonies those days. And Korea is a massive supplier of poppies to a trade that flourishes in Japanese Manchikuo, a meth, which goes on general sale just in time to become a wonder drug for soldiers in World War II. There's plenty of that being made in Korea too. And like anybody knows, it's never going to really leave the region. Yeah, speaking of wonder, drugs and war, I think

next week we're going to be doing an episode on Captagon, which is really interesting. Nice, nice. Yeah, I can't wait for that. It's going to be so interesting. So we get to 1945, right? The bombs drop on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Japan surrenders. And we've got a Korea full of meth factories and poppy fields.

And that year, the peninsula is roughly in two halves along its 38th parallel, with Soviets controlling the communist north and the US and its allies back in the south. This guy called Kim Il-sung, a hero of the insurgency against Japan. he's installed as the USSR's guy in North Korea and he sets about building his workers' paradise with a ton of money from his Moscow sugar daddy. Now this guy is widely viewed by his people as a national hero but he's like barely Korean.

He's grown up and come of age as a guerrilla fighter in China and by the time he takes control, his Korean is so bad he needs Soviet translation and training for his speeches. But Kim builds this mad cult of personality around himself. At first it's just stuff like, being a tactical and political genius, but soon you've got these fable-like stories of him shaming teachers into sobriety, another really weird shit. And it's going to get way weirder with his successes, which we'll dive into later on. I think my favorite one out of all these,

I'm not sure if it's him or something like whoever it is, but there's one about getting like 45 holes in one while playing golf, which kind of rules because it's the kind of thing I would do if I was a dictator if I was 13 years old, you know? Yeah, maybe it's like crazy golf or something. And also, I mean, I think that you might be lined up and shot for saying that. Because we're going to get into some of this later on, but I reckon his real score, his real score, I'm doing air quotes, is way lower. So I think you'd probably be done for disrespecting the dictator there. Anyway, Kim christened the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which, as anybody can tell, has nothing to do with democracy or really looking after its people. I mean, this is Stalin's era, right?

so you've got brutal purges, rapid industrialisation, but south of the border it isn't actually much better. In July 1948, the Americans back a guy called Singh Man-Ree, who's this right-wing, authoritarian, who's already been impeached once before in the occupation years. And this is South Korea's first election, right? And Rhee comes home winner with a totally cool and legit 92.6% of the vote. And he carries out his own purge on leftist this time,

murdering up to 200,000 folks. Reeves' bloodbath even grosses out the Americans who tamped down their support and GIs leave the country in their thousands. So, so far, independent Korea, whichever one, is a pretty shitty place to live. Both sides want to unite Korea again, but only Kim has a decent enough army to do it, and in 1950 he invades, and he quickly destroy his opposition with Taviats'i and huge main power. They take Seoul in terms of the army. two days and push remaining US and UN troops all the way to Busan, which is the city right

on the bottom of Peninsula. Anyway, this isn't like Dan Carlin's seven-hour history show or whatever, so I won't go into too much detail. But the Korean War goes on for three years. It drags in China and America fully into combat, at least three million dead, and Korea, right back where it was before the war, divided along the 38th parallel. Just this time, it's a carpet bomb wasteland. You really have to do a lot more emphasis in your voice. You know, if you're doing Carlin, just really passionately read the scripts, maybe drink a couple of scotches before you do it. But, I mean, good effort.

There's way more mulberry reds in that voice than I could ever even try. But anyway, here's a quote by the South Korean writer Huang Sok Yong. People hated and killed each other back then. Now, even those who survived are dying, leaving this world one by one. Unless we find a way to forgive each other, none of us will ever be able to see each other again, Well, spoiler alert, I think he's not going to get what he wants. At first, North Korea actually outperforms its neighbor economically. With help from Mao and the Soviets, it mechanizes, builds gigantic factories,

trades a ton of materials with its powers in the communist world. It goes through cycles of five-year plans, just like the Chinese, and Kim builds this national ideology of Juche, or self-reliance, with him as its godlike king, turning socialism into this kind of like nutty, Leninist monarchy. It's totally bonkers, right? But you know, money-wise, at least it's working at this point. Even if Kim builds concentration camps and there's no free press and folks are conscripted forever and they have no freedom. But yeah, okay, it's working. Is it though or is it only working because it's completely subsidized by like the Soviets and the Chinese? Well, here we go. I mean,

Stalin dies pretty soon afterwards, right? And Chris Jeff denounces him. And North Korea gets all like pissy just like Albania back in the day saying that now the Soviets aren't the real revolution news blah blah blah and they start to drift away from Moscow which is a bad move I thought we've already discussed there will be no insulting of Albanians on this podcast

oh right yeah I'm sorry Albania was a work as paradise and everything was just fine in the 60s Pyongyang gets Pali with Mao's China but it's sinking into debt and it's failing to meet production goals and plowing up to a quarter of its budget on the military and I mean we're not I say military, I mean a gigantic military. North Korea's population today is thought to be around

25 million, half of South Korea, which makes it the 54th most populous nation on earth. But it actually has the fourth biggest army with over 1.2 million personnel and insane amounts of machinery. Having like 5% of your population in the army is probably a good way to avoid invasion. But it doesn't do a lot for your economy. So in the 1980s, North Korea defaults on all its debts. I mean, it just can't plug all the holes in its awful system with borrowed cash. And then a decade later, obviously, the Berlin Wall falls, Boris Yeltsin staggers half-pissed into the Kremlin, and communism's going down to Swanee, right? Suddenly, Juche means sweet FAA. It can't trade with anyone. It doesn't have the expertise to buy machinery, fertilizer, equipment, and it doesn't

have the cash to buy any. So before the fall of the Soviet Union, was there enough food in North Korea? Like, were they avoiding the famines of the last decade or so or not really? Yeah, I mean, as far as I could figure out, yes, because they were just getting backed up by their pals. But yeah, when everything went to crap, then Pyongyang was just like completely on its own. And after the Berlin Wall and fell, Pyongyang launches this really creepy campaign to curb people's diets. It tells them, quote, let's eat only two meals a day. Hey, emphasis, Kim's not mine.

I mean, intermittent fasting, bro. They were just ahead of the curve. Oh, yeah, all right, yeah. Well, I mean, they were more than intermittent fasting, because, like, shockingly, this makes absolutely no difference. And this famine that starts in 1994, that kills between a quarter of a million to three million people. Pyongyang calls it the, quote, arduous march,

relating it to some myth about Kim fighting off thousands of Japanese soldiers in the freezing snow in the 40s, which, like, somehow makes it. even creepier and weirder and more tragic. And this famine, it changes everything. On a personal level, people realise that the state just can't keep them fed, while the Kim's family is now dripping in luxury. It's actually state policy that leaders live in unbelievable wealth.

And whatever the leader says, just goes. Actually, in the 1970s, the Koreans give up on the term Marxist-Leninism, and they just call their ideology Kim Il-Sungism. This guy is, I know, it's incredible. This guy is this like fat, rich gangster living like the Godfather, paying off his generals or capos or whatever with bribes and cushy positions as, quote, diplomats overseas. Though we're just about to find out that's not really what their main jobs as envoys are.

Kim's personal fortune is supplied by a shady institution formed in the 1970s 2. This is called Bureau 39, because it's based out of room 9, floor 3 of the rage, team's finance department. And this slush fund group, which is answerable only to the eternal leader himself, this is going to become North Korea's drug machine. Where was the money coming from before the drugs? Was that all supplied by the former Soviet Union?

No, I mean, they were making stuff. So they mechanized and I think they're like iron ore and like raw materials that they were, they were flogging to other parts of the communist world. And they were big on agriculture. but when it all kind of like imploded in the 90s yeah that that kind of changed and North Korea was forced to find other ways to make a living and we're going to see just how they did that

Kimmel Sung is unsurprisingly into some really grim shit by the way one of Bureau 39's jobs is to maintain the Kipumjo or Pleasure Squad which is an alleged group of 2,000 women kept as entertainment including sex of course for the North Korean leadership and high-ranking members of its regime. Kim Il-sung is intersex as a kind of disgusting fountain of youth thing, believing he could take the life force of young virgins if he has sex with them. I mean, it's pretty straightforward pito stuff there from your boy, Kim.

See, this is the sort of gritty details that our audience comes to us for here. And, you know, that and meth and, like, you know, the occasional history lecture that you're giving right now. Oh, yeah, history, meth, and pito's, that's our, like, trifecta of greatness. So anyway, back to the 1990s, right? North Korea's just gone through this devastating famine. Production is screwed. The economy is tiny and there's nobody to trade with.

Big problem. Kim Il-Dyung dies in 1994 and his diminutive son Kim Jong-il steps into daddy's shoes. And he quickly decides his ultimate dream is for North Korea to get a nuclear bomb, which is going to keep everyone's hands of his so-called hermit kingdom. By the way, it's like I found this out. This term wasn't just made for the DPRK. Korea's culture had been so unique and cut off for centuries. It was actually called a hermit kingdom for like pre-colonial Korea.

So you can crack that one out at your dinner party and thank me. But Kim has obviously got barely any money to build this bomb. And North Korea doesn't have any foreign currency thanks to the fact that it's a giant police state with concentration camps in the communist regime. Can you tell that it's shit yet? So he starts dabbling in the dark arts, right? Capitalism. Kim encourages local entrepreneurs to trade.

though of course everything's kept in close check by the regime. So who is supporting North Korea during this time? I mean, is it, I know that they have close relations with the Chinese. Is China backing them up in any respect? Yeah, it's pretty much China. I mean, China bailed them out in the war and started beating the US and the UN's ass. And yeah, it's pretty much only China that's trading with them. I mean, I guess part of the reason is they don't want millions and millions of North Korean refugees

coming across the border. And I guess like any stability is good for the Chinese. That's kind of how they operate. Part of this era for North Korea is just completely wound up with drugs. North Korea is producing heroin from poppy fields, same as it was doing under the Japanese almost a century before. Almost all of that's going through the folks in Bureau 39, by the way, which is this giant criminal operation, essentially,

aimed at getting around sanctions. The UN is just like slap. in on the DPRK, one after another, making it the most sanctioned place ever and hopefully forever. It joins illegal activity like cigarettes and pirated goods. The North has been smuggling all over the world for like yonks. And it ferries them about on cargo ships, carrying false flags and other stuff. Cigarette smuggling is such a massive and profitable industry. Like I feel so many mafios and militias are involved in it, a bunch of the ones we've covered.

I mean, it's really fascinating and I would love to read a history of it. Is there like a vape smoking market? You know, we might have to... Exema is unpredictable. But you can flare less with ebbglis. A once-monthly treatment for moderate-tissaphyr. After an initial four-month- or longer dosing phase, about four and ten people taking ebbglis,

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I actually went to Transnistria. Do you know that place? It's like a sort of quasi-Neo state or Moldova. And they make tons of their money, like basically just like selling cigarettes across the border and selling it. You know, they're like Mashruka vans and stuff like that. They just ship cigarettes into the EU. Anyway, that could be another episode.

And this is not all, right? There's a great documentary on Bureau 39 called Cash for Kim, where they speak to this defected diplomat who said he was stationed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the North Korean embassy just straight up had a mint printing US dollars, and then selling the fake notes alongside real ones to local illegal money changes. Putting the fakes in the middle of fat wads of hundreds, it's like, this is such basic stuff that millions is laundered for the DRC's banks and taken out in real dollars and then sent straight. back to Bureau 39. Is that, that's the plot of rush out? Or is the plot of rush hour too? I think it might be the plot of rush hour, yeah.

It's definitely one of the rush hours is based on that. I mean, like, this stuff is mad, right? These fake notes the DPRK is making, they're so good they're known as Super Dollars. And they've caused entire runs on American currency all over the world as folks spooked by news of North Korean bills have rushed to banks to cash their own in. U.S. policymakers have even considered halting production of $100 bills on the back of this, which is nuts.

Agents have said the notes are an upgrade on cigarette and pirate entertainment smuggling, which was like a cash cow for years before the notes came along. They've even changed their designs and materials as the Americans have changed theirs, writes Time Magazine's David Woolman, quote, These ultra counterfeits are light years beyond the weak facsimiles produced my most forges, who use desktop printers. I mean, if you're desktop printing a dollar, Bill. Like, well done, mate.

According to the State Department, by the way, there's around 70 million bucks in counterfeit notes sloshing around the global economy, which is like, surely BS. That's like barely a speck on the landscape. And there's this Vanity Fair article, right, which chats to a South Korean expert, who believes, and this is in 2009, by the way,

that the North Koreans have bought enough of the special for Drinier, I don't know what the exact name, but that's the paper that they print these notes on. They've bought enough of that stuff to make two billion in super dollars. Is this still a thing? Yeah, I mean, as far as I can tell, yes, and they're all over the place.

Like this, this Fannity Fairpiece, which is really cool, by the way, it's from 2009, so that's the last kind of solid one I found. It's about this guy who was sentenced to 12 years. By the way, this is all on the reading list, it's another plug for the reading list. Yeah, there's this guy who's sentenced to 12 years,

and he's making millions in super dollars. Then just like spending him in casinos in Vegas, and this guy named Liu, he was born in Taiwan in the 60s and went by the name Wilson, which is great, swapping his time between LA and Vegas, where he made, like, bank on the slots. And he tells

the writer David Rose, quote, we see the shows like Celine Dion, oh, her songs touch my heart, and in the evenings, we've played a slot machines. Dude, some of the scariest people I've met in this world, like real killers, gang members, militia, all that. They just love, like, the great world,

class divas, her, Whitney, Mariah, all the super popular in 90s ones, I think a lot of people don't realize how absolutely huge that Titanic song was. You know, I still hear it when I'm in the Middle East in Cabs, like every time you go in, you're going to hear the Titanic song.

I mean, if I was going to get like gunned down by a guy with an MP5 for a drug deal, it would be like 0.01% like sweetened by having my heart will go on in the background, I guess. Yeah, that's the... It's not worse, right?

I mean, in slow motion without playing in the backgrounds? Yeah, I can do the like Willem Defoe bit. Yeah, actually, that scene would be better if it was Celine Dion in the background. Anyway, Cash isn't the only stuff Bureau 39 rips off. Like, it's been called shipping illegal ivory from Africa, DVDs, gold, cars. They're basically the Del Boy and Rodney's of Global Crime if anyone in the UK is listening. Are you getting that reference? No, no idea whatsoever.

Nah, didn't think so. The country also has like over 150,000 enslaved workers all over China, Russia, Eastern Europe, and they make the regime up to a billion dollars each year. And this is in a country whose GDP is like 25 billion bucks, which is only a bit more than Staten Islands. And it pumps up to 20% of that straight back into the military. That's the Staten Island GDP that's on the books, buddy. Yeah, fair enough.

It's probably like 10 times that. And South Korea, by the way, its own GDP, is like 1.65 trillion, which is 60 times more in the north. And its people are so much better off. They're actually taller than their northern cousins. So you can see who's winning on pretty much every front today. And Bureau 39 does some other shit that's just as weird, right? Like when I lived in Dubai, like an eternity ago,

there was this strange North Korean restaurant, not far from where I live, that did local dishes like cold noodles. And all the white staff are women in bright traditional dresses. I mean, yeah, that turns out. to have been funneling money back to the regime. And it's actually a change. Yeah, I've seen, there have been stories or video reports on that sort of thing. And it's all just to get foreign currency, right?

Yeah, they're desperate for the stuff. Like, North Korea also operates a lucrative museum at Ankhawat in Cambodia. I mean, even here in Berlin, the North Korean embassy was like a massive hostel in the middle of town, whose profits from backpackers went straight into Bureau 39. Jesus. The authority is, I know, it's crazy, right? And it's like right in the middle. You cannot miss it.

What's the scene like there? Ah, man, this is like pure pill-popping techno kids, like nothing else. It's like, it basically looks like North Korea, which is exactly what the kids are going for in Berlin, right? The authorities shut this place down last year, anyway, finally. And North Korean officials have been caught running like insurance scams, fake companies, all kinds of underworld stuff. It's basically a state-sponsored mafia, but just sloppier? I mean, it's pretty much just a mafia state. Bureau 39 has also trained armies of hackers since the 80s, of course.

And these guys are like really, really, really good. The Lazarus Group is this hardcore team set up in 2009, and it's been involved in a ton of attacks, including that 2014 Sony Pictures hack. That's the one that came after that Seth Rogen movie about assassinating Kim Jong-un or something. That's Kim Jong-il-sun. Kim Jong-il-sun.

to like see Korean words, who took over when Kim Jong-il died in 2011. And the Lazarus group, that was also to blame for the 2016 Bangladesh bank heist, which made off with about a billion dollars, 2001 a cry hack, which I think was like the world's biggest when it happened. And then most recently, the Lazarus group has hacked like pharmaceutical companies involved in the creation of COVID-19 vaccines, which is really lovely, of course. Can you elaborate on the 2016 Bangladesh bank ice? Because I don't remember hearing about that. I feel like, like right now, it's like quite complicated, but basically, from what I remember, it's like Bangladesh's biggest bank and they just sent a massive order that because it was

stalled, they could make off with the cash at night. And then before the employees came in in the morning, this cash had like just disappeared from the bank's coffers. But it was like huge. There's a really good, I think I've put it on the reading list as well but there's a really good Al Jazeera documentary or something about it which is like all animated and stuff if it's not on there I'll make sure it is anyway but yeah like these North Korean hackers

they're not just kind of doing it politically right they're just trying to get all of that dollar they're trying to get as much bag as they can and they're getting tons of it and before we get into the narco stuff because I mean that's what you guys are here for right I want to do some Kim Jong-il inverted commas facts, right?

Like the time he invented the hamburger, given it the catchy name, double bread with meat, and the guy never took a piss or a shit, apparently, and his birth on a sacred mountain caused the seasons to change, even though he's actually born in a Siberian Soviet village, that last bit is actually real.

Oh yeah, and of course there's that time. He shot a 38 under par 34, which beats the lowest ever PGA tour round by 25 shots, which is pretty, I mean, that's pretty impressive, right? Yeah, that's the, want. Yeah, I mean, you're already dead at this point, but yeah, yeah, he got a pretty low score. And we'll have some more of those for his son later on. So, now to the drugs.

Heroin production is ramping up in the wake of the 1990s famine in North Korea, as Kim Jong-il is looking for sanction-busting ways to make his nuclear bomb. From 1997 to 2003, more than 20 North Korean diplomats, agents and trade officials are implicated, detained or arrested in drug smuggling operations in more than a dozen countries, including Egypt, Venezuela, India, Germany, Nepal, Sweden, Zambia, Ethiopia, Liao, just like all over the world these guys. North Koreans have also been arrested in possession of Captagon, which, yeah, we've got coming up. And they've been caught making homemade Viagra, which, I mean, I wouldn't really fancy my chances

trying out North Korean Viagra. In April 2003, Australian troops board the freighter Pong Zoo, which is owned by North Korea, but it's flying a flag of convenience from Tuvalu. Loll. Anyway, the soldiers recover almost 125 keys of smack that has previously landed on an inflatable in the Australian state of Victoria. That's one, home to Melbourne, by the way, where we did a show about gangland killings last year. Four North Koreans are detained in this bust, which they're probably thrilled about, right?

Because they want to leave. and then deported, which they probably aren't. The North Korean regime denies any knowledge of the drugs, of course, but there's more. I'm kind of interested in the distribution and how that works. Like, are there street gangs and crime families having meetings with North Korean dignitaries set this up? Are they're brokers? Pretty much they're using the same sort of distribution networks as like Saichi Lop in Myanmar, the guys that are like flogging meth all around the world, Australia.

Like, you get the Aussie bikies to do your job for you, the outlaw guys. They're mostly based in Thailand, Southeast Asia, Cambodia, and at the end of it is just North Korea's government and not some guy in a Burmese jungle. Yeah, the meth, right? Remember the meth that the Japanese were popping in the war, the ones the soldiers were using that keep them going crazy? North Korea kept its troops high on it in the Korean War as well.

And by the early 2000s, it's taking off across Asia, especially in Japan, whose people do it to keep going through their country's crazy work, culture and get like messed up on the weekend. Around 2004, Kim Jong-il sets up a bunch of massive meth factories, mostly in the country's northeast, near the borders with China and Russia, which is useful, right, because China is where almost all precursor drugs for meth in Asia comes from, just like we learned in the Burmese lab episode.

Most of North Korea's production is based in a city named Ham Hong, which is the site of a chemical plant that the Japanese built during the war, and it has a high number of chemists. It's also one of the worst hit places during that famine in the 90s, and that's important. So this is a Tokyo professor, Stephen Nagy, speaking to Deutsche Vela in 2017.

Quote, The North has a long track record of manufacturing and selling drugs overseas, and it's a convenient fallback for the raging, it's a ratchet-up production when sanctions are stepped up, and is harder for them to export legitimate goods. I mean, it's kind of fascinating

how many states and wannabe states, or militant groups, revolutionary groups, all turn to drugs to keep themselves propped up. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's something that's so difficult for, like, transnational organizations to keep tabs on, right? I mean, it's just a huge load of place. And like we learned in the Burmese lab episode, like the links between the Tatmador and Myanmar military

and these drug dealers is pretty much just hand in glove. Anyway, Kim's plan with these massive meth factories, it works. In 2005, Kim Jong-il makes a big announcement. North Korea's got the bomb. Hey, great news for him and his family. Probably bad news for like pretty much every other human being on Earth. And then in 2006, the regime seems to shut down meth production altogether.

And even issues of warning to would-be meth lords announcing that all drug offenders would be sentenced to death, regardless of their, quote, status, services or achievements. So do they do this just because he gets the bomb and he's like, like, all right, shut it down, we're done, we don't need to do this anymore? Well, yeah, I mean, like, everything else that goes on in North Korea, it's pretty much speculated on, like, whether it's true or not, I don't know, but just as an expert tells that Al Jazeera, documentary I mentioned earlier, that cash for Kim won, quote, essentially North Korea is a criminal record.

That is how the regime makes its money. And what this guy means is, basically North Korea is a mafia. And despite the 06 edict that Kim dishes out, the guys are. have been running these meth labs, I mean, remember, these guys have been hit so badly by the famine. They probably don't trust the government to provide for them again. They just go freelance and they set up their own artisanal operations, probably with some small degree of consent from the regime. I'm not sure. Nobody's really sure. And anyway, not only is this stuff high grade, but it's fueling a massive domestic rush on meth. It's popular with elites and families

even give each other meth as a gift on special occasions. Just like imagine Lindsay Lohan on a Tuesday, but on a giant scale. Really solid Jay Leno in 2009 joke. I think I might have to sell meth to hire a comedian to go through your scripts and punch them up a bit. I'm going to claim half ignorance on Jay Leno. He's that guy who kind of like stands sideways in the camera and tells crappy jokes, right? Anyway, one defector tells the Wall Street Journal that around 80% of her town is hooked on meth.

and up to 40% of the population in the northeast region take meth regularly. This is insane, right? I mean, meth in North Korea is called Bingdu, which is the Korean translation for the Chinese word for ice drug. It's been low-key popular since the 90s when the economy tumbled, public healthcare disappeared, and people used it to replace medicine, which is pretty awful.

Andre Lankov, who runs the website NK News, tells the New York Times that, quote, meth until recently has been largely seen inside North Korea as a kind of very powerful energy drug something like Red Bull amplified yes fucking amplified that misconception that it's like red ball not that it gives you energy which it most certainly bloody does stresses a quote significant underestimation within the DPRK about the dangers of drug use in fact a rampant meth problem is probably good for the Kim's right it helps grease the arms of military officials, it doles people's appetite for freedom or evolution.

I guess in that way it's similar to what the Brits did in China or Burma in the 19th century. Anyway, whatever's going on in the DPRK post-bomb King Jong-il is a different diplomatic proposition for the rest of the world altogether, different ballgame. And he says he'll come back to the negotiating table if some sanctions are dropped. And just like that, everybody caves in. Tons of cases are dropped. even the crew of the Pong Su, remember that ship that got busted by the Aussies, they're allowed to go home. Explain this a bit. In return for entering negotiations about nuclear weapons, all the trafficking cases involving North Koreans and, you know, diplomats in different countries, those are dropped?

Pretty much, yeah. Like, he's able to, I mean, he's just able to play chicken now with the international community. So he's like, well, you don't want to piss me off too much. Which they always said about Gaddafi, right? They were just desperate not to give him the, the bomb and he ended up dying in a like tube somewhere. So as you might expect during this time, North Korea's narco trafficking just continues full-blooded. Its biggest market is China, of course, where meth use is widespread. And this is a Chinese official, by the way, speaking to a Newsweek report in 2011,

quote, we don't publicise the drugs coming from North Korea because it would harm the good relationship between China and North Korea. Of all the drugs we've seized this year, It's mostly been nice because that's our main drug here. I'm genuinely surprised that the Chinese put up with this. I mean, me too. And I mean, meth is still big in China, but like, like, I've done a bunch of, like, work on Burma.

They did crack down around 2014, I think it was. So I think it's changed somewhat. But it's still big business. I mean, there's all kinds of meth problems in, like, Singapore, the Philippines, Japan. Like, it's still big business. Anyway, that same year, 2011, Kim Jong-il pops his tiny little clogs, and his youngest son Kim Jong-un becomes leader of North Korea. And really, nothing major changes.

Basically, the country is completely a mafia at this point. The Kims are the Corleones, and their extended clan controls pretty much everything. Anyone who falls foul of the big man, and he is a big man, is dispatched, sometimes in gruesome fashion. Like, when Kim Jong-un's uncle was executed by anti-aircraft gun in 2013, and that's insane, right? And his body incinerated with flame throwers, which is pretty narco-y. But, like, are these stories real? You know, I always feel like there's a couple countries, especially North Korea, where reporters can get away with writing wild things,

just because no one's there and no one bothers to fact-check. And I kind of feel like sometimes you hear these stories, and it comes out a little bit later that it wasn't true. It's impossible to say for sure, right? I mean, they definitely do have some pretty outlandish execution methods. I mean, like, you find out that someone is part of some evangelical Christian. group that hates North Korea. And I found a few of those and I've kind of flagged a few up and not put them in here.

But I mean, I've got everything again on the Patreon so people can make their own minds up. If you need any more comparisons to the mob, Kim is thought to have around $5 billion scrolled away in European bank accounts. A human rights official tells the British newspaper to Telegraph that, quote, somewhere in the world there are bankers who are earning a large sum of money by concealing and managing Kim Jong-il's secret funds. And at the same time, almost 9 million people in North Korea are suffering from food shortages. I believe the secret bank accounts are now in Luxembourg or have recently been transferred from Luxembourg to other tax havens.

Well, actually, according to intelligence sources, that should be Luxembourg, Austria, China, Liechtenstein, Russia, Singapore, and our old friends, the Swiss. And they educated Kim too. And I saw some video right where I think Kim might have even been speaking German, which, It's pretty nuts. Anyway, a giant slush fund would go at least some way to explain why the leader of one of the world's poorest countries drives around in a massive Mercedes, where's 12 grand Swiss watches and reportedly eats luxurious food every day. Basically, Kim is like a feudal king.

Sources also suggest the Russian mafia is being used to launder dirty and fake money for Pyongyang through the embassy in Moscow as well. I mean, he's not the only leader of a poor country to live luxuriously. You know, it's pretty powerful the course, I feel like. Yeah, I mean, he might be the only one. I don't know. It's just like, it's so weird North Korea. I can't.

I feel like when you start researching it, you go into a different mindset as well. It's so odd. When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing. You can do anything. So people can see your thing, feel your thing,

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I mean facts about the Supreme Leader. So here's a few. You know that pleasure squad from before, right? The team of virgins Kim has at his daily disposal, Well, he apparently spent 3.5 million bucks on their lingerie costumes in 2016. He's a big fass from cheese from his time studying in Switzerland, which isn't a surprise. And he's a hennyman, which is like totally on point. Obviously, this guy is big into the NBA, which goes like 20% of the way to explaining his friendship with Dennis Robben.

He's got his own personal band called Moran Bong, which has had hits with catchy cool tunes like, do prosper era of the workers party. Wow. And he apparently likes Disney. And he once stripped an uncle naked and fed him to 120 dogs in 2013, which, yeah, given what you were just saying, I mean, make your own minds up. I've put the links up on the Patreon.

Take a look. It's all mental. And at this point, I want to give a shout out to a guy called Ulrich Larson. He's a chef from Denmark. This is like totally aside, but it's so cool, who decided he'd go undercover and, exposed North Korean drugs and arms smuggling. He spent three years meeting up with Koreans

and this Spanish guy named Alejandro Cao de Benos, who's this true believer in Juche, who heads up the Korean Friendship Association, which is just like a front. Wait, I'm sorry, what the fuck? Like, this chef from Denmark just takes it upon himself to freelance drug deals to expose North Korea?

Yep, that's exactly what he did. And, like, all this stuff came out in the show called The Mole, which is directed by another Danish guy I really love called Mads Brooker. He did like a brilliant film 10 years ago called The Ambassador, where he like exposed the shady world of diplomatic credentials in Africa. Yeah, I've seen it. Anyway, yeah. Watch that movie first, then watch the mole.

So some of the hidden camera stuff on the mole is pretty amazing, right? Like when Calde Benos, who's this just random Spanish guy who loves North Korea, he's pitching this fake billionaire that the guys, the producers have put up, is just an actor, for guns and drugs. and he's saying, quote, we are developing things in the pharmaceuticals industry that are forbidden in any other country in the world. It's basically the same like methamphetamine.

Yeah, it's methamphetamine. And then he tries selling tank and submarine factories, missiles, like this random actor playing a millionaire's like, yeah, I mean, I fancy building a ton of subs this year. And then they get invited to Pyongyang and led to an underground Bianca, and this fucking, like, actor must really be questioning his agent. like probably been like an extra in parks and wreck or something and suddenly it's been frog march to a possible execution spot but it's it turns out it's a legit weapons and drug

to deal after all and there's a menu of stuff just being laid out on the table my my distrust that i have of all documentary filmmakers is just kicking in a bit yeah that's fair i mean you should watch it is a good show anyway that year 2013 is where our story's going to reach its climax with that Bangkok deal i mentioned at the top of the show so This thin, 53-year-old North Korean guy named Yey Tyeong-Tan Lim and a 41-year-old Filipino, tell a buyer, who's actually a DEA agent, that their bosses in Hong Kong can provide high-quality meth made in North Korea. The agent must have been, like, absolutely buzzing at this point. According to the indictment, Lim says that, quote,

it's only us who can get from the NK. The NK government already burned all the labs. only our labs are not closed. So yeah, that answers the question about brokers. Yeah, and I guess, I mean, I don't know whether they're telling the truth, but it suggests that there was like a partial shutting down of these meth labs by the government, but people are just kind of going freelance. And he continues, quote, to show Americans that they are not selling it anymore, they

burned it. Then they transfer the meth to another base. So yeah, that's kind of the situation we got. Lim says he's going to struggle to get the 100 key the agent once out of North Korea. But he's got a bunch of storage in the Philippines, which is, yeah, how lucky is that? And now this is where it gets, like, really juicy. There's this band of ex-U.S. snipers wandering around working for Columbia and narcos, right? One of them's this 41-year-old vet named Joseph Rambo Hunter, this hulking guy from Kentucky,

21 years in the services, PTSD, like, this guy is pretty scary, full on. his little gang offers contract kills as bonuses and it heads all over the world basically like guns for hire and it even plots to murder a DEA agent in Liberia where tons of these drug shipments are going through wearing masks that make him look like a black man according to one indictment amazingly at this same point he's also the head enforcer for Paul LaRue

the mad South African narco come smuggler come murderer come warlord who he spoke to Evan Ratliff about a while back. Anyway, Hunter, Rambo, he's deep into buy keys and drug dealers in Thailand. And there the DA agent

hooked up with two British narcos whom he convinces to go for Lim's product, that's the North Korean stuff, even though one of the moans that DPRK meth is expensive, first of all, and it's hard to get in. Wait, I'm confused.

We have the North Korean and Filipino suppliers. We have the DEA agent buying and the British narcos. But like where does Hunter, where does Hunter and his snipers fall into the play here? So they're just like freelancers. They're bumming around the world, just working for whoever narco will like pay them.

So they're big on LaRue. And I guess they're in the Philippines at the time and going to Thailand is just like part of a normal day for them. And they're just, yeah, this like elite group of ex-army sniper guys running around doing contract kills, doing security for deal. What are they doing in this?

deal? So they're securing the load. So they're just like there to watch and make sure everything's like kind of running on tick. Yeah. These guys, they call the meth quote DVDs in the deal. How clever. And they get to work establishing a route for this high

grade stuff into the States. And this stuff is like 98% pure. Walter white pure. Probably higher, I guess. So they find this route through Liberia and Lim sends over 4,700 keys of tea on a boat to Liberia to check it's all legit.

But the DEA's already got everything under wraps, obviously. And when the actual product rolls into town, the cops spring into action. That November, Thai police snag five men including Rambo, who's like this clique of guns for hire, is supposedly protecting that shipment going through Liberia, Liberia, and even plotting to kill a DEA guy in Liberia as part of it. They get those guys. And this isn't even the end of Rambo's story.

He's flown to New York alongside these four others. There's a Brit, a Filipino, Taiwanese and Slovak. And he actually manages to slip out of his handcuffs a while away in trial, which ends his hope of bail. He's sentenced to 20 years in 2015 for the DEA murder conspiracy charge and for his part in shipping cocaine through West Africa as an enforcer for Leroux. So he's not getting done for the North Korean stuff at this point. And then in 2019, Rambo's sentenced to life for ordering the gruesome killing of Filipino real estate agent Catherine Lee, which is the backbone of Evan Ratliff's book, The Mastermind, by the way. Just definitely read that. It's amazing.

Prosecutors argue that he, quote, tortured, kidnapped and killed people for years, along with other soldiers. So Rambo's deal is basically that he was an ex-soldier, turned contract killer, and he's scoped out Liberia's this great place to hang because it's handling all these sheds. shipments for drugs coming from Asia, South America into the States. He's just like greasing all of these huge drug shipments around the world. And he just happens to get involved on the North Korean bust. But he's also

wound up with Leroux, Eastern European cartels according to the feds, and the North Korea and DEA murder plots both end up reaching their climaxes in Bangkok. Rambo's exact role in the DPR case, according to a vice news piece, sorry, Danny.

Quote, remains a mystery. He has not been charged in connection with the investigation, and his indictment makes no mention of the MEP or the defendants in that case. Federal prosecutors handling Hunter's case in New York declined to comment. However, a DEA source does confirm to the media that those cases are linked. And this is a good quote from a US security official after that 2013 bust. There is no such thing as organised crime in North Korea that doesn't involve the government. crime is disobeying the leadership. They passed a law solely to fall the West,

that's those shutting down the meth labs, and they passed it in order to control the businesses internally to make sure people who are in the party when operating behind the back of the leadership. It's a soprano state. If they find somebody going around the senior leadership, that person gets whacked. I mean, that guy knows how to play the media.

Anyway, I arrest my case. And honestly, North Korea just seems to be getting more hermetic, more desperate, more depressing, setting up missiles all over the place and retreating deeper into this mad form of communism. I wouldn't bet on a change any time soon unless Kim has a heart attack like his granddad, who knows. That's our show this week.

North Korea, insane, eh? Who'd have thunk it? Please do like, subscribe, share, rate, all that stuff. And I'll have someone talking on the Patreon about North Korea some more, I think like in a couple of days or so. So if you're more into this, this kind of stuff, check into that because I'm fascinated by this. And I hope this somehow goes some way to understanding how this whole mad drug North Korea thing operates.

So yeah, that's the show. Awesome. Thanks again, everyone for listening. Make sure you do all that stuff. Tell a friend, tell another friend, tell a family member, all that stuff to listen to the podcast. And take care. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile, with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much.

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