Japan believes the unidentified ship was either on a spy mission or was used for drug trafficking.

If it was just drug trafficking, why would the Koreans bother to tie themselves to the boat? Traffickers are usually just in it for the money... you'd think they wouldn't care what happens to their bodies or what secrets their corpses could reveal once they are dead.

It may very well be that the N. Korean govt. is funding itself or parts of it by drug running into Japan.

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Bodies lashed to 'N.Korea spy ship'

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May 5, 2002 Posted: 5:33 AM EDT (0933 GMT)


An infrared video camera showed a boat firing a weapon, which the Japan Coast Guard says is a rocket, at its patrol boats in the East China Sea in December

Staff and wires

TOKYO, Japan -- Japanese divers have found several bodies lashed to a sunken suspected North Korean spy ship, raising suspicion they attached themselves to the vessel to make recovery difficult, according to a newspaper report.

Japan is trying to identify the ship and its mission. Intelligence sources suspect the ship was on a spying or drug smuggling mission for Pyongyang when it sank during an exchange of fire with a Japanese coastguard vessel in December.

Tokyo wants to raise the ship to prove the boat is North Korean so it can lodge an official complaint. It also wants to cull evidence from the sunken hulk about North Korea's suspected spying and drug trade in East Asian waters.

The coast guard began a diving operation on Wednesday and has so far recovered the remains of a man from the seabed along with a gun, cartridges, a cartridge belt and a magazine near the wreckage of the ship.

Japan's Yomiuri newspaper, citing coast guard officials, said the recovered body was tied to the stern with a rope, while four other bodies, yet to be recovered, were found tied to the deck with what appeared to be rope.

The crew may have tied themselves to the vessel to ensure their bodies would not be easily recovered, making identification difficult, it said.

Sailors sometimes rope themselves to their vessel to prevent them being washed away in a storm.

Gaping hole

Divers on Saturday also recovered two weapons and what appears to be a bullet from the seabed. They also saw a gaping hole in the deck just below the bridge, raising speculation the crew may have scuttled the boat to avoid capture, the Yomiuri said.

In December, the Japanese coast guard fired on the 100-tonne vessel after it intruded into Japan's 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone and ignored orders to stop. It later sank, apparently with the loss of all 15 or so crew.

The coastguard recovered two bodies wearing life jackets bearing Korean writing.

North Korea has accused Japan of mounting a smear campaign over the vessel and threatened unspecified counter-measures, saying Japan was linking the ship to the communist North "for no reason."

The Japanese diving operation is due to end on Tuesday.

The already rocky relations between the two countries worsened sharply when North Korea launched a three-stage missile over Japan's main island of Honshu in August 1998.

They had started normalization talks in 1991, but the North broke off negotiations when Japan raised complaints that Japanese people had been abducted by North Korea. The talks resumed in 2000 but have failed to make progress.

Red Cross negotiators from Japan and North Korea held two days of talks in Beijing last week, after which North Korean Red Cross officials agreed to search for missing Japanese people.

Japan reportedly wants to raise the boat by the end of May, an act which depends on the cooperation of China, the North's traditional ally.

In March, Beijing balked at a request to salvage the vessel, asking Japan not to "complicate the situation." But Beijing has since softened its stance, and Chinese officials recently have hinted that they would not object.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/05/05/japan.nkorea.boat/index.html

The North Koreans have been smuggling drugs into Japan for some time - it's a source of hard currency for the North Korean government.

I was not aware that N. Korea had been positively identified as a source of drugs for Japan. What kind of drugs are being smuggled? Heroin? I'm curious who N. Korea's drug trading partners are.

Chapter 3, Section D.

Mostly methamphetamines, which the North Koreans can manufacture locally and distribute through the large North Korean community in Japan, from what I've caught in the news.

You're probably right on that.

A rogue state? The charges

North Korea is often referred to in the media as a rogue state. Commentators refer to a series of incidents linking the state or government of the country to drug smuggling, money laundering and arms selling. Here are just a few incidents.

In 1976, a major diplomatic triumph for North Korea was reversed when their ambassadors to Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland were expelled just shortly after ties had been established - the first relations with Western countries. The diplomats were accused of using their position systematically to smuggle.

In 1993, Shin Kanemaru, a senior politician from Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, was disgraced when large amounts of gold were found in his office. The unmarked ingots were believed to have come from North Korea.

Witnesses report that the train from Pyong Yang to Moscow is regularly searched and large amounts of drugs are seized.

North Korea is believed to distribute 'Super 100s' the highest quality forged $ U.S. 100 bills in circulation. Some sources speak of channels formerly running through the Arab Gulf countries.

In the 1990s, North Korea is widely believed to have sold medium-range Scud missiles to both Syria and Iran.

(*My note... I guess this has something to do with the 'axis of evil' designation *)

Pubdate: Friday, 18 February 2000
Source: Japan Times, The (Japan)
Contact: opinion@japantimes.co.jp
Copyright: © 2000 Japan Times
Website: http://www.japantimes.co.jp

Pyonyang blamed for drugs

North Korea targeting Japan market, NPA claims More than 40 percent of the illegal stimulants seized by police across Japan in 1999 either came from North Korea or are linked to the Stalinist state, the National Police Agency said Thursday.

The NPA believes the figures prove that North Korea is becoming deeply involved in the lucrative business of selling stimulants in Japan - an issue that could develop into another serious headache for Tokyo-Pyongyang ties.

Police confiscated a record 1,970 kg of amphetamines last year, more than in the previous five years combined.

The agency said that 863.8 kg, or 43.7 percent of the total, is believed to have some connection with North Korea.

The agency said it has confirmed that 664 kg of drugs were smuggled into Japan from North Korea, but it added that there is no evidence the drugs were made there.

The haul from North Korea includes some 100 kg of amphetamines found in a Chinese ship docked at a Sea of Japan coast port in Tottori Prefecture in April 1999, and 564 kg seized on a beach in Kagoshima Prefecture in October that year.

Police could not confirm whether about 200 kg of drugs confiscated in other locations last year came from North Korea, but tests at the National Research Institute of Police Science showed the drugs were of the same chemical composition as the ones confiscated in Kagoshima. There were other similarities, such as the way the drugs were packaged, leading to suspicions that the 200 kg were from the same source as the Kagoshima haul.

Behind the rise in seizures is a sharp increase in smuggling attempts, the NPA said. Only 60 kg of drugs believed to have originated in North Korea were confiscated in Japan in 1997.

But testimony by suspects arrested in a 1998 case, in which about 170 kg of stimulants were dumped in the sea off Kochi Prefecture to avoid confiscation, gave police information about the North Korean drug-smuggling route, the NPA said.

The agency said it has instructed all prefectural police forces to be more alert to drug smuggling from North Korea, the agency said.

Earlier this month, police seized 250 kg of amphetamines at a port in Shimane Prefecture. Police suspect the drug was transferred to a Japanese fishing boat from another vessel in North Korean territorial waters.

The growing problem of North Korean stimulants smuggled into Japan could pose another serious hurdle before Tokyo-Pyongyang ties can improve.

The two countries, which have no diplomatic relations, have been holding preliminary talks aimed at resuming official negotiations for normalizing ties. The talks have been stalled since 1992.

The talks have made slow progress, however, as North Korea has continued to flatly deny that its agents kidnapped about a dozen Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s and took them to North Korea.

A 1999 report by the U.S. State Department suggested that North Korea may be involved in drug production and smuggling as a national project to gain foreign currencies to support its ailing economy.

The report estimates that North Korea produces 30 to 40 tons of opium a year, adding that it is rapidly expanding its capacity for stimulant output.

Citing past arrests of North Korean diplomats and employees of state-run firms over drug smuggling in China and Europe, the report concludes that the North Korean state itself appears to be involved in the entire operation.

According to the NPA, South Korea was the primary source of stimulants in Japan in the 1970s, Taiwan in the 1980s and China in the 1990s.

An NPA official said Japan does not have evidence of drug production in North Korea.

Japan Times, February 18, 2000

Testimony before The House Committee on International Relations

SOURCE

James R. Lilley
Resident Fellow, the American Enterprise Institute

Wednesday, March 24, 1999

North Korea: A Continuing Threat

The agreement to visit Kumchangri, the site of an alleged underground nuclear weapons facility under construction, will not solve, nor even ameliorate, the nuclear threat in North Korea. The US is buying access to a site, and it will discover nothing. Incriminating equipment has long been removed and is now at another secret site, or sites. The North Korean regime’s foremost objective is to survive with its present leadership and system in tact, nuclear weapons and delivery systems are essential to this primary goal. In North Korea’s view to give up its nuclear weapons program is to commit suicide. The US has abetted this by consistently compromising on inspections, by first, delaying them in the Agreed Framework, and now confining them to one suspect site in this latest agreement. The holes in our position on this latest agreement are as large as the one in the original Agreed Framework of October 1994.

But first, it is important to deal with a few fallacies which are the base of the Administration’s position:

- Fallacy one: The US avoided war in 1993-94 by negotiating an Agreed Framework which put a cap on their nuclear weapons program.

The North Koreans threatened war in 1993-94 as they have innumerable times since we started negotiations with them almost 50 years ago. Brinkmanship, bellicose language, moving ground and air forces, have been standard fare. The problem was our negotiators were unfamiliar both with North Korea’s negotiating record, and therefore with their tactics.

In March 1993, I received a phone call out of the blue from Ho Chung - the North Korean representative at the United Nations. He let loose a 15 minute non-stop blast – Kim Jong Il, the dear leader had ordered a general mobilization for war, the US was led by war maniacs, and death and destruction were surely coming. I asked him if he was finished and then told him I was speaking for myself, but I was sure that the North Korean government was not crazy or irresponsible enough to start a war because that would end in North Korea’s obliteration. End of conversation. 18 months later I was invited to North Korea and given royal treatment. In meeting with North Korea’s foreign minister – Kim Yong-Nam I put a piece of paper on the table outlining North Korea’s troop dispositions, forward deployed and considerably larger than opposing forces in South Korea. Kim dismissed the paper with some choice Korean phraseology. I then asked what his version of the disposition was. He did not answer. During that same visit, I presented the North Koreans with a detailed version in Korean of Kim Dae Jung’s 3 point proposal for a peaceful unification with the North (Kim is now president of South Korea.) The North Koreans took these without comment.

My point is this: the Administration did not prevent war in 1993-94 with its multi-billion dollar pay off, nor did it cap the nuclear weapons program. As Yongbyon is now monitored, North Korea has predictably turned now to underground sites, uranium enrichment and probably outright procurement of nuclear weapons from states such as Pakistan and Russia. North Korea in fact has already been caught trying to smuggle advanced missile technology out of Russia. We have merely stretched the time out indefinitely by allowing this dangerous fanatic dictatorship continue to exist, to put its money into its military, and to blackmail us for more money and aid. We are now trapped into subsidizing a designated terrorist state with the largest US aid program in East Asia. We are paying our money to a state which as national policy counterfeits our money to support its embassies overseas (see Annex one). Should not a struggling Indonesia be getting this money and food? Where are our priorities?

- Fallacy two: Humanitarian aid must be unconditional and responsive only to need.

The North Koreans see unconditional food aid as an almost unbelievable concession on out part. North Korea’s whole mentality is to exploit their adversary’s weaknesses to build their own strengths. In their minds they are asking, how could a primary adversary feed them while they threatened him with death? How could your enemy allow you to arm yourself against him while claiming that he had disarmed you? It was an incredible gift from us couched in conciliatory and evasive language.

Two historic analogies: In 1959 China in the midst of an earlier lunatic communist stage started the Great Leap Forward. Millions died of starvation under a system which forced collectivization into giant communes, used rural labor to build senseless backyard furnaces, and experimented with close planting which ended up destroying crops. The Chinese got no aid but 20 years later, at their own initiative, the Chinese launched a massive reform of their agricultural system which under went decollectivization, brought foreign fertilizer plants, and appealed to individual peasant initiatives. This led to bumper harvests, and rapid GNP growth. The Chinese people were lifted out of poverty and a more liberal economic system was created.

Case two: The Ukraine had massive starvation in the 1920s. The Hoover Commission was sent from the US with a well controlled food aid program (much more closely monitored than the North Korean food aid program today.) 5 million lives may have been saved but Russia ended up with Stalin, the liquidation of kulaks and perhaps 20 million dead Russians.

North Korea must therefore reform its agricultural system now to save millions of lives. Our present course is leading us to a Stalinist alternative.

The Administration denies direct linkage between our promise of approximately 500,000 tons of food and access to Kumchangri. The North Koreans bargained hard for this food aid and linked it to our access. There is little question in their minds of this linkage. Why do we deny it? Credibility goes out the window and that commodity is in short supply right now.

- Fallacy three: KEDO (Korea Energy Development Organization) must be preserved at all costs. It was the opening wedge into North Korea. If dropped, the argument goes the North Koreans would return to building nuclear weapons.

The fact that the Administration fought so hard and openly for KEDO provided the North Koreans with leverage over us. The North Koreans could threaten to abandon KEDO (many of their American supporters blamed the US Congress for causing this by not adequately funding KEDO.) The North Koreans and their friends have ganged up on Congress. The argument was often simple – it’s KEDO and a few million dollars, or war and the loss of thousands of lives.

I understand our commitment to KEDO was used in the latest negotiations to whittle down some of the North Korean obscene demands for access. We apparently finally realized how important KEDO was to the North Koreans. We have also belatedly realized that the Agreed Framework and KEDO belittled South Korea, our allies, and made direct North-South negotiations, the real key to a long term solution on the peninsula, more remote. The economics of these two LWRs (light water reactors) we are providing are outrageous. They are simply a prestige item for the North. The LWRs are well beyond North Korea’s capability to use them efficiently for power unless there are huge additional financial outlays by us for an effective power grid. The money could be much better spent elsewhere. For instance, for small coal-fired or hydro-electric plants, and for dams, irrigation reforestation, and fertilizer. The Perry plan allegedly makes KEDO an essential part of a large framework for dealing with North Korea. Continued funding for KEDO will thus be subsumed in this larger framework and thus KEDO funding will be declared essential if there is to be any chance for success for the larger framework. This new plan therefore needs to be studied carefully and questioned about its real objectives. For instance, is it simply to support KEDO, or is it a realistic plan to deal with the North?

- Fallacy four: China has been an important "strategic partner" in achieving our aims. China had a constructive approach for which we should be grateful.

It is true the Chinese are important to a solution but they act in their own interests, not to please us. They were helpful in getting both Koreans into the UN in 1991 (our goal) because they wanted better relations with South Korea – ROK was becoming increasingly important to the modernization of their economy, China’s prime objective at the time. China has not wanted another North Korea long range missile shot because it would enhance the chances of TMD for Japan, an anathema to them. China has not coordinated with us their considerable food aid to North Korea, they have not joined KEDO as we have sought, and they have not been helpful on our getting access to Kumchangri. They considered this demand a violation of North Korea’s "sacred sovereignty."

There are other fallacies which I can discuss orally.

In a positive vein, what has emerged recently is the tentative linking of food aid to our gaining eventual access to Kumchangri. Now having broken the ice, we should make our whole program of food aid contingent on North Korean agricultural reform. The potato deal could be a first small move in this direction. The other important developments are South Korean moves into North Korea both economically and in tourism (people to people). In the period 1991-92, the South Koreans took the lead and achieved remarkable progress in two agreements with North Korea on Reconciliation and Denuclearization – agreements signed at the Prime Minister level. President Kim Dae- Jung knows his brothers and adversaries in North Korea well and how to reach them. Kim also knows that his sunshine policy must be linked with a powerful and credible deterrence to North Korean threats to use military force.

North Korea has had to make concessions recently to survive. It knows it needs more than weapons of mass destruction – it needs food, foreign exchange, and a beginning towards some kind of economic reform. It must now balance its economic needs for survival with its dependency on military force and threat of force. A skilled US negotiating team can exploit these contradictions.

There is a division of labor emerging between the US and South Korea. South Korea should take over economic and political dealings with the North as we have botched up the economic side by throwing money, oil and food at the regime without reciprocal movement by them. Our primarily role should be to prevent proliferation of WMD, and to deter war.

Our previous policies in Korea have been an outstanding success story. In South Korea we have in the past 45 years prevented war, we have supported successful economic growth, and we have witnessed the coming of genuine democracy. North Korea is a threat to all three. Its evil core has spawned narcotics and arms smuggling, counterfeiting our money, murder, sabotage and assassination as matters of national policy. This threat must be contained so that the tragic Korean peninsula be peacefully reunified under a democratic, free market and stable system. The Korean people deserve no less, and must take the lead in bringing it about.

Note: Ambassador Kartman has done a competent professional job in negotiating with the North Koreans, a most frustrating and bloody minded adversary. He has inherited a policy disaster bent on placating the North by buying it off.

Annex One:

North Korea’s Criminal Activities

Drug smuggling

- January 1998, two North Korean diplomats based in Mexico were arrested in Moscow for attempting to smuggle 35kg of cocaine into Russia.

- July 1998, two North Korean diplomats passing through Egypt were discovered carrying 506,000 tablets of Rhypnol - a sedative used as a "date rape drug." This has been the largest seizure of Rhypnol so far.

Counterfeiting

- North Korea has been circulating counterfeit dollars through diplomats and trading companies. Since 1994, more than 10 cases worth over $4.5 million have been uncovered around Southeast Asia.

- From December 1995 to January 1996, Ethiopian and Nigerian diplomats in North Korea found that $2200 of the $3000 they had withdrawn from their accounts in North Korea was counterfeit money.

- April 1998, Vladivostok, Kil Chae-Gong the Deputy Director for International Affairs of the Workers Party and the secretary managing secret funds for Kim Jong Il, was caught exchanging $30,000 of counterfeit money.

Weapons smuggling

- September 7, 1996, Hong Kong security authorities revealed that Maebong Company - a company under the control of North Korean Ministry of Armed Forces, purchased large numbers of shot guns, machine guns and mortars from the Chinese PLA. These weapons were then resold to rebel groups in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong-based criminal organizations.

- In September 12, 1996, Hong Kong customs authorities confiscated weapons such as long-range field guns, missile launching remote control devices, and missile parts on a North Korean ship bound for Syria.

http://www.freerepublic.com/fo cus/news/706708/posts?page=1

More bodies found near sunken ship in E. China Sea

Bodies lashed to 'N.Korea spy ship'

Gaping hole