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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 11:56 am
korea, north
Time: 11:56 am
korea, north
Results for korea, north
30 total results foundAuthor: Haggard, Stephan Title: Economic Crime and Punishment in North Korea Summary: The penal system has played a central role in the North Korean government's response to the country's profound economic and social changes. As the informal market economy has expanded, so have the scope of economic crimes. Two refugee surveys - one conducted in China, one in South Korea - document that the regime disproportionately targets politically suspect groups, particularly those involved in market-oriented economic activities. Levels of violence and deprivation do not appear to differ substantially between the infamous political prison camps, penitentiaries for felons, and labor camps used to incarcerate individuals for a growing number of eocnomic crimes. Such a system may also reflect ulterior motives. High levels of discretion with respect to arrest and sentencing and very high costs of detention, arrest, and incarceration encourage bribery; the more arbitrary and painful the experience with the penal system, the easier it is for officials to extort money for avoiding it. These characteristics not only promote regime maintenance through intimidation, but may facilitate predatory corruption as well. Details: Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2010. 24p. Source: Working Paper Series; WP 10-2 Year: 2010 Country: Korea, North Keywords: Bribery Shelf Number: 118527 |
Author: Kan, Paul Rexton Title: Criminal Sovereighty: Understanding North Korea's Illicit International Activities Summary: North Korea's criminal conduct -- smuggling, trafficking, and counterfeiting -- is well known, but the organization directing it is understudied or overlooked. This report focuses of North Korea's Office #39 as the state apparatus that directs illicit activities to include the manufacture and distribution of illegal drugs, the counterfeiting of U.S. currency, and the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit cigarettes. Details: Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2010. 36p. Source: Internet Resource Year: 2010 Country: Korea, North Keywords: Counterfeit Currency Shelf Number: 118408 |
Author: Trimble, Meridee Jean Title: U.S. Policy Options Toward Stopping North Korea’s Illicit Activities Summary: North Korea began its involvement in illicit activities in the 1970s, but it took the United States until the new millennium to develop a series of major law enforcement approaches to counter these activities. North Korea’s illicit activities are purportedly the funding input for the development of its nuclear weapons program, which constitutes the output. The main illicit activities to be discussed include drug production and trafficking, the counterfeiting of U.S. currency, cigarettes and pharmaceuticals, missile sales and human trafficking. The United States has aggressively addressed the nuclear threat that North Korea poses, but has been slow to address the inputs that fund the outputs. This thesis seeks to answer the question of why it took the United States over three decades to address the illicit activities of North Korea that purportedly fund its nuclear program. Details: Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2007. 91p. Source: Internet Resource: Master's Thesis: Accessed April 18, 2012 at: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a475783.pdf Year: 2007 Country: Korea, North Keywords: Counterfeiting Shelf Number: 125018 |
Author: Sovacool, Benjamin K. Title: North Korea and Illegal Narcotics: Smoke but No Fire? Summary: This article examines the extent to which the North Korean regime has dabbled in the state-sponsored production and distribution of illegal narcotics. Many U.S. policymakers, including the president and secretary of state, and many within the U.S. media tacitly accept the idea that the North Korean state is an increasingly active drug trafficker and producer of heroin and methamphetamine. A review of the available evidence, however, shows these claims to be unsupported. The fact that the existing data can hold North Korea responsible for only less than one hundredth of 1% of global narcotics production and the fact that satellite imagery has been unable to confirm any North Korean drug production strongly suggest that the regime receives at most a tepid percentage of its annual revenues from narcotics trafficking. Details: Seattle, WA: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2009. 23p. Source: Research Note, Asia Policy Number 7: Internet Resource: Accessed June 14, 2012 at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/asia_policy/v007/7.sovacool.pdf Year: 2009 Country: Korea, North Keywords: Drug Trafficking (North Korea) Shelf Number: 125351 |
Author: Gause, Ken E. Title: Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment: An Examination of the North Korean Police State Summary: Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment lifts the curtain on North Korea’s three main security agencies—the State Security Department, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Military Security Command. Established with Soviet assistance in the mid to late 1940s and modeled on the Soviet secret police apparatus, North Korea’s internal security agencies rely on constant surveillance, a network of informants in every neighborhood, and the threat of punishment in North Korea’s notorious prison camps to ensure the Kim regime’s total control. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, Kim Il-sung refused to follow the de-Stalinization campaigns that took place in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and instead continued to adhere to the Stalinist interpretation of law as an indispensable tool in the arsenal employed to implement state policy. While rejecting both the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as “left opportunism” and the post-Stalinist Soviet inclination towards a more collective style of leadership as “bourgeois revisionism,” Kim Il-sung put in place his own version of nationalcommunism, centered on his cult of personality. To enforce his rule, he employed methods of oppression rooted in four decades of Japanese occupation of Korea, and especially in the 500 years of the Chosun Dynasty, which preceded the 1905 annexation of Korea by Japan. Yeon-jwa-je—guilt by association—imprisonment in political prisoner camps of up to three generations of those suspected of wrongdoing, wrong-knowledge, wrong-association, or wrong-class-background, and Songbun, North Korea’s discriminatory social classification system, both originate in the Chosun Dynasty’s feudal practices. Ken Gause’s unprecedented report draws on extensive research to reveal the key role played by North Korea’s security agencies in the establishment and preservation of the Kim regime through two hereditary transmissions of power. From Pang Hak-se—also known as the “North Korean Beria”—to Kim Pyong-ha and U Dong-chuk, the reader learns about the dark eminences of North Korea’s repressive apparatus and their merciless purges of those perceived as “enemies of the revolution,” then “enemies within the revolution,” and finally of those eliminated as scapegoats for the systemic failures of the regime. As North Korea’s security agencies ruled over an all-pervasive system of coercion, control, surveillance, and punishment, within their own ranks, competition for favors from the ‘Great Leader’ and the ‘Dear Leader’ often resulted in conspiracy, intrigue, and the rise and fall of even the most powerful of officials. Despite strict surveillance, dissent has also existed in North Korea, especially within the ranks of the military. The report addresses two instances when, in the 1980s and 1990s, what could have become organized dissent was brutally eradicated by North Korea’s internal security agencies. Through overseeing the In-min-ban system— the Orwellian neighborhood watch— North Korea’s security agencies ensure that privacy doesn’t exist, and everyone is under strict scrutiny. Not only criticizing authority, but also unauthorized stays, adultery, absenteeism, or watching South Korean videos are punished with prejudice. The security agencies play a primary role in restricting the flow of information and ensuring strict ideological conformity through harsh surveillance and coercion. North Koreans must participate in self-criticism sessions or face punishment, even time in a political prison camp. State security agents conduct routine checks to ensure that radio sets remain perpetually tuned to the state frequency, and “109 squads” roam border towns at night, arresting smugglers and confiscating South Korean TV shows and dramas that have entered the country via portable media storage devices. Nevertheless, the report also notes that the advent of post-famine small-scale private economic activity, cell phones, DVDs, USBs, smuggled radios and increased access to foreign broadcasting and bribes are beginning to erode some of the information blockade and political controls. Those North Koreans who assume great risks to gain access to information from the outside world and to impart information show courage, whether their actions are an act of dissent or just the result of wanting to learn more about the world. What might ultimately bring change to North Korea is the increased inflow and outflow of information. The security agencies, however, continue to enforce North Korea’s information blackout, by increasing border surveillance and cracking down on marketplaces, unauthorized phone calls, and foreign broadcasting. Having ensured the survival of the Kim family’s dynastic regime for six decades, North Korea’s complex and ruthless internal security apparatus will no doubt continue to be a key element of Kim Jong-un’s political control. Greater awareness of how it operates is essential to understanding how the Kim regime remains in power. Details: Washington, DC: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012. 288p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 14, 2013 at: http://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/HRNK_Ken-Gause_Web.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Korea, North Keywords: Human Rights (North Korea) Shelf Number: 127614 |
Author: Rademeyer, Julian Title: Diplomats and Deceit: North Korea's Criminal Activities in Africa Summary: Much has been written about state-sponsored North Korean criminal activity in Asia and Europe. But relatively little attention has been devoted to North Korea's illicit activities in Africa, which run the gamut from trafficking of rhino horn and ivory to gold and tobacco. This report - which draws on hundreds of pages of documents, academic research, press reports and interviews with government officials, diplomats and defectors in Southern Africa and South Korea - presents an overview of evidence implicating North Korea in criminal activity ranging from smuggling and drug trafficking to the manufacturing of counterfeit money and black market cigarettes. It examines North Korea's current involvement in Africa, the complex history of African-North Korean relations and allegations that the country's embassies in several African states are intimately connected to a complex web of illicit activity aimed at bolstering the Kim Jong-un regime and enriching cash-strapped diplomats. An analysis of press reports and other publicly available information conducted by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime shows that North Korean diplomatic passport holders have been implicated in at least 18 cases of rhino horn and ivory smuggling in Africa since 1986. Despite North Korea's waning influence on the continent, incriminating evidence linking its diplomats to ivory and rhino horn smuggling continues to emerge. The report includes interviews with a number of high-level North Korean defectors about their knowledge of, and stated involvement in, a range of criminal activities. They claim that smuggling by North Korean diplomats is widespread, with couriers traveling regularly to Pyongyang and Beijing in China with diplomatic bags stuffed with contraband. "[D]iplomats...would come from Africa carrying rhino horn, ivory and gold nuggets," explained one defector who ran a North Korean front company in Beijing. "Every embassy [in Africa] was coming two or three times every year." The persistent abuse of diplomatic immunity by North Korean diplomats and agents poses a particularly vexing problem for law enforcement. Increasing economic sanctions and isolationist policies designed to cripple North Korea's nuclear weapons capabilities are. Details: Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2017. 39p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 25, 2017 at: https://conservationaction.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/TGIATOC_Diplomats_and_Deceit_DPRK_Report_1868_web_.pdf Year: 2017 Country: Korea, North Keywords: Animal Poaching Shelf Number: 147433 |
Author: Arterburn, Jason Title: Dispatched: Mapping Overseas Forced Labor in North Korea's Proliferation Finance System Summary: North Korean overseas forced labor is both a proliferation finance and a human rights issue. The Kim regime sends citizens to work abroad under heavy surveillance, confiscates their wages, and uses the funds to support a nuclear program and domestic economy dependent on foreign currency. Previous research on the topic has relied heavily on anecdotal reporting and focused principally on either human rights abuses or workers in low-skilled occupations. Few reports have considered high-skilled labor in the context of North Korea's labor export program, and while some investigations have connected individual labor operations to North Korea's broader illicit portfolio, no previous studies have attempted to do so at scale across multiple industries and jurisdictions. This report extends our proven methodologies for tracking North Korea's proliferation networks to the financial relationships of people and companies that facilitate its labor export program. Details: Washington, DC: C4ADS, 2018. 66p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 9, 2018 at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/566ef8b4d8af107232d5358a/t/5b631c9b2b6a2845024e4ff5/1533222111619/Dispatched+Final-2.pdf Year: 2018 Country: Korea, North Keywords: Forced Labor Shelf Number: 151092 |
Author: Human Rights Watch Title: "You Cry at Night but Dont Know Why": Sexual Violence against Women in North Korea Summary: Sexual and gender-based abuse and violence appear to be routine in North Korea, occurring in virtually every social context. Women in North Korea feel powerless to escape sexual abuse and violence and feel ashamed when they are victimized. Fearful of social disgrace and retribution, and with few, if any, avenues for redress, women rarely report abuse and perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence against women are almost never held accountable. "You Cry at Night but Don't Know Why" documents sexual violence against women by government officials in North Korea. It identifies contributing factors, including deeply embedded patterns of discrimination against women, unchecked abuse of power, socio-economic factors including corruption, and lack of sex education or awareness about sexual violence. The report highlights failures by the North Korean government to prevent violence against women, provide protection and services to victims, and investigate and prosecute complaints. Human Rights Watch calls on the North Korean government to prevent sexual violence against women. The government should ensure that police, prosecutors, and courts treat sexual violence as a serious crime. It should accept international advice and assistance with the goal of holding officials accountable for abuses, protecting victims, integrating sexuality education into schools, and providing counseling, legal assistance, and improved reproductive health and other medical services to women. The government should also undertake a public education campaign making clear that violence against women is prohibited in all forms and letting victims know how they can obtain assistance. Details: New York: HRW, 2018. 98p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 3, 2018 at: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/northkorea1118_web2.pdf Year: 2018 Country: Korea, North Keywords: Gender-Based Violence Shelf Number: 153238 |