The Null Device

Beat this, Medellin

North Korean defectors testify about weapons programme, government-run heroin export industry, suggesting that North Korea gets a big chunk of its funds from its heroin and methamphetamines industry, and that the government thereof is essentially the world's first nuclear-armed drug cartel (though given its penchant for kidnapping useful talent from overseas, that's not too surprising). Though weren't there rumours of the Soviets having massive opium plantations in their Asian republics to bring in hard currency in the '80s or so?

There are 5 comments on "Beat this, Medellin":

Posted by: mitch
http://
Thu May 22 03:45:02 2003

“… Whereas traditionally organized crime tries to penetrate the state, in (North Korea) it’s sort of the inverse paradigm where the state is penetrating organized crime.” http://www.msnbc.com/news/165145.asp?cp1=1

Posted by: gjw
http://the-fix.org
Thu May 22 05:19:29 2003

Capitalism creates the market. Communism obliges with the production.

Posted by: acb
http://dev.null.org
Thu May 22 07:02:28 2003

Indeed, aren't most corporations internally command economies much like Communist states?

Posted by: Graham
http://grudnuk.com/
Thu May 22 09:44:34 2003

Well, North Korea doesn't have anything else to export, I guess. Mud?

Posted by: acb
http://dev.null.org
Thu May 22 10:32:28 2003

They had a booth at Comdex last year showing their software industry, showing 100 products "from translation programs to video games".

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/04/22/1019233308823.html

I wonder what the video games would be like.

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