Secrets of ‘Office 39’: North Korean leader Kim gets Russian fuel via Singapore dealers...

SCMP ^ | 28 June, 2017

[TigerLikesRooster]

Secrets of ‘Office 39’: North Korean leader Kim gets Russian fuel via Singapore dealers, says defector who fled China

Defector: ‘It is a wrong perception that North Korea is completely dependent on China’

North Korea secures up to 300,000 tonnes of oil products from Russia each year through Singapore-based dealers, a defector who formerly managed funds for the leadership has told Kyodo News, posing a challenge for the United States as it seeks to isolate Pyongyang.

“North Korea has procured Russia-produced fuel from Singapore brokers and others since the 1990s...It is mostly diesel oil and partly gasoline,” Ri Jong-ho, 59, a former senior official of Office 39 of the Workers’ Party of Korea, said recently in the US capital in his first interview with media under his own name.

Ri also said North Korea relies more on Russia than China for fuel to keep its economy moving, indicating that the US drive for Beijing to restrict oil supplies over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes will only have a limited effect.

“It is a wrong perception that North Korea is completely dependent on China,” he said.

Petroleum products have been shipped to North Korea by tankers leaving Vladivostok and Nakhodka, both in the Russian Far East, with the fuel widely used for cars, ships and trains, helping to support the North’s economy, Ri said.

/snip

North Korea receives 500,000 tonnes of crude oil each year through a pipeline from China, resulting in around 70,000 to 100,000 tonnes of gasoline and about 100,000 tonnes of diesel oil after refining, but the oil products are exclusively used by the North Korean army and are not good enough for cars that carry the elite, Ri said.

/snip

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[TigerLikesRooster]

The full VOA interview with Ri on which this SCMP article is probably based.

Sanctions Taking Toll on North Korea Regime, High-level Defector Tells VOA

excerpts

WASHINGTON —
Editor's Note: In a two-part series, VOA's Korean Service spoke with senior-level North Korean defector Ri Jong Ho in his first public interview since his defection in late 2014.

A senior North Korean defector told VOA Korean that the current efforts to tighten economic sanctions on the North are effective and could over time destabilize Kim Jong Un’s regime.

“Economic sanctions, if continued, will erode the North Korean regime’s grip on power, create more opportunities for market activities and stir all kinds of corruption and disorder in the country,” said Ri Jong Ho in his first public interview since his defection in late 2014. “That loosening of government control will strike at the very foundation of the [top-down] leader-based system.”

[gaijin]

For those who do not know:

Office 39 is estimated to be one of the most secretive places on Earth.

Maybe Beyond Area 51, etc.

[LucyT]

Secrets of ‘Office 39’: North Korean leader Kim gets Russian fuel via Singapore dealers, says defector who fled China

Defector: ‘It is a wrong perception that North Korea is completely dependent on China’

Check out article.

Thanks, TigerLikesRooster.

[tflabo]

I say do a military shipping blockade of NK. Nothing goes in or out. If Fat Boy attacks let him have it and hard.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

One ton of diesel would be about 285 gallons.

[Little Ray]

Gotta wonder where the Norks get the money?
Where do they get foreign currency?
What are they selling that other people want?
How much of the money is counterfeit?

[TigerLikesRooster]

They sell raw mineral resources, fishery product, and some pricey farm products(mushrooms.) Mostly to China, from which they filter into other countries.

They have also been running large "rent-a-slave" operations. They sent workers to Russia(Siberian lumberjacks). Also to China, Eastern European countries such as Czech and Poland(sweatshop workers.) To S. East Asian countries(construction workers.) Even Dubai employed N. Korean workers for building soccer stadium. Many countries sent these workers home following UN sanction, but still many are out there in China and Russia.

Besides they have their hands in all kinds of illegal smuggling operations, Internet gambling operations, and Cybercrimes. There is also illegal drug manufacturing and smuggling.

Their traditional money makers such as arms export and super-note operation may have gone down due to stepped up surveillance and interdiction.

[AdmSmith]

North Korea ordered its diplomats in some number of foreign embassies, including at least one in Eastern Europe, to sell illegal drugs on the streets. The diplomats, according to a defector who spoke to South Korean intelligence, were each sent abroad with 20 kilograms (about 44 pounds) of drugs and were told to raise $300,000 from the sales
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/03/22/report-north-korea-ordered-its-foreign-diplomats-to-become-drug-dealers/

[Wuli]

Thanks. I was not aware of this.

It reveals there are some limits on Trump pressuring China.