ROK National Smuggling Drugs from DPRK, Illegally Exporting Stolen Cars to DPRK
Drug Smuggler's Written Confession Fingers North Korea's 'Black Ops
Tokyo Shukan Shincho
May 6, 2006
Investigators say the amount of stimulant drugs brought in by that man [U Si-yun] easily exceeded 1,000 kilograms. This led to the dramatic arrest of the "kingpin" after his name appeared several times in police investigations of the smuggling into Japan of the "made-in-North Korea" drugs. When he was arrested two years ago on another charge, he completely denied the smuggling allegations and evaded indictment. But his written confession from that time, a mixture of truths and falsehoods, still refers to the North Korean "Black Ops."
There is usually an unspoken understanding that North Korean goods will be of slipshod manufacture and inferior quality.
But in regard to narcotics, North Korea is proud of the high-purity and high-quality "Made in North Korea" brand narcotics that they produce.
On 12 May, a joint investigative team of Metropolitan Police Department officers and prefectural police arrested South Korean national, U Si-yun, 59, and three gangster leaders for violation of the Stimulant Drugs Control Act. Among the arrested, U had been targeted by the Metropolitan Police as a central figure in illicit trading and a major broker of narcotics smuggled into Japan through the North Korean route.
A veteran reporter covering the Metropolitan Police Department described the investigation.
"The charge this time is that U played an intermediary role for North Korea and brought in around 200-300 kilograms of stimulant drugs in October 2002 through Yasugi Port in Shimane Prefecture and sold them to Japanese mobsters. Compared to other countries' drugs, North Korean amphetamines have a high level of purity and command double the usual price, with end-users paying about 60,000 yen per gram. In other words, that was a huge shipment worth over 12 billion yen, and he was nabbed as a main culprit in the case."
A certain drug dealer had this to say about the case.
"Certainly compared to Chinese-made amphetamines, North Korea's are five, ten times more pure. They are excellent goods: you don't use a hypodermic, you just inhale the smoke."
In the trade, the method of smuggling is called "riding the current." A vessel carrying the shipment leaves a North Korean port and when it is offshore from Japan, crew tosses the narcotic drugs wrapped in plastic overboard. A boat from the Japanese side then picks up the packages.
The drug smuggler continued his explanation.
"What I often hear is that they use basketballs. They cover the balls with a net and put one-kilogram packages of the drugs in the net. Then they put weights on the balls so about five centimeters of the ball can be seen when they're in the water and they chuck them into the sea. Even if their actions are caught by satellite or something, they look like they're just casting nets. A Japanese boat waiting in another area reads the current and then picks up the balls."
It is a method that has been conceived knowing that even at sea, contact between a North Korean-registered vessel and a Japanese fishing boat could be caught by a military satellite and the vessels traced. Of course, there is always the risk that the recovery of the shipment could fail. The Metropolitan Police reporter says "Actually U has lost shipments by the 'ride-the-current' method."
"One month after the time he was arrested for a big shipment, it is known that U brought over another large shipment of narcotic drugs. But they misread the current and couldn't pick it up. The shipment was over 200 kilograms, and it ended up floating off of Tottori, where the authorities picked it up. What's really surprising is that U wasn't involved in just these cases. In April and July in 2002, he smuggled in several hundred kilograms' worth of stimulants using the same method."
If the failed shipments were included in the figure, in 2002 alone, U must have smuggled over the incredible amount of one ton of stimulant drugs into Japan from North Korea.
Origin of Payments for the Stolen Cars
U was also connected to the North Korean spy ship that was sunk after a desperate shootout with Japan Coast Guard patrol boats in December 2001. [The reporter continued:]
"It has been confirmed that when the spy ship was being chased by Coast Guard patrol boats, a drum was thrown overboard. There were probably stimulant drugs in it. The authorities also ascertained that the cellular phone that was found on the ship after it was later pulled up from the sea originally belonged to U."
U really was the ringleader of the smuggling through the North Korean route. However, although U's name had come up several times in investigations of smuggling, he had always just barely managed to dodge arrest by the police.
How did U come to be entrusted with those huge amounts of stimulant drugs by North Korea? We can get a glimpse of that story from the records of a case when he was arrested on another charge two years ago.
The file for that case amounts to almost 200 pages of various written reports. The records were made when U was arrested in 2004 on the suspicion of exporting eight stolen cars to North Korea in May 2001. Although he was also suspected of drug smuggling from that period, U completely denied any involvement in the smuggling of stimulant drugs and he escaped the charges.
Instead U admitted the charge of exporting the stolen cars, which was carried out at the same time as the drug smuggling he was also involved in. In his written testimony, U explained in detail his early life and experiences dealing with North Korea.
Although his testimony is a mixture of lies and truth, the following are excerpts from those records.
"Yesterday I was arrested for buying stolen cars that I knew had been stolen. I am now being held at the South Police Office in Fukuoka Prefecture. I was born in Nagano Prefecture. When I was going to marry a South Korean woman, I changed my nationality from Korean to South Korean.
"When I was a second-year junior high school student, my two elder sisters and I joined other Koreans in Japan in the repatriation program, and we returned to North Korea. My second elder sister married a man named Kim So'l-pu in North Korea. My contact for exporting the stolen cars to North Korea was this man So'l-pu. With So'l-pu, I: (i) received the orders for the cars and the money to purchase them from North Korea; (ii) bought the stolen cars from the group that stole them and exported the cars to North Korea; (iii) made a sales route for exporting cars from North Korea to China, and from 1998-9 illegally exported scores of stolen cars.
"The reason they specified cars that ran on gasoline was that since North Korea is a very cold country, diesel cars were not suitable. I was also told to get cars painted different colors because white cars were not popular in North Korea.
"In order to pay the car-theft-ring for the cars, I myself went to China or to North Korea via China to pick up the money and bring it back to Japan. I admit that during this period I went to China to pick up money. I brought back 30 million yen in cash. I remember that the party that provided the money was from the Chinese branch of the North Korean state-run company Mebong."
The Mebong company mentioned here is a trading company under the aegis of the Workers Party of Korea. U then goes on to explain in detail that the "Black Ops" were providing the money to be paid to the ring that stole these top-class cars.
The written record also contains U's explanation of the reasons why he stopped exporting the stolen cars from May 2001.
"Since I began exporting stolen cars from 1998, I earned from about 60 to 70 million yen, but I had this growing feeling that I did not want to be doing a business where there was a high risk that I would be arrested. I used the money I got from the stolen cars to use as seed money for a loan-sharking business I started. I have been making a living doing that until now. I earn about two million yen a month. I am writing this with the intention of honestly admitting the things I have done, but among the people I was involved with, there are some people I cannot possibly name. Please forgive me."
Chemical Factory of the Japanese Army
Although he gave up exporting stolen cars, in fact U got involved in the smuggling of stimulant drugs, which would bring him much greater profits. The fact that no mention is made of stimulant drugs in his testimony makes his words hard to trust.
But in the end the verdict handed down on U gave him the relatively light sentence of two years and six months. He was probably greatly relieved. After serving some of his sentence, U was released on parole on 6 April this year.
But just when he thought he could lead a leisurely and comfortable life on the money he had accumulated, he was arrested again, this time on the smuggling charge. Undoubtedly the size of the smuggled amount itself will ensure that U will not return soon to this world.
A person connected to the investigation had the following to say.
"From the circumstances, it would seem natural to assume that North Korea proposed the exporting of the stolen cars and the smuggling of the drugs as one package. The problem is if they used his relatives living in North Korea as sort of half hostages to convince him to do it, and then made him into a drug smuggler -- that's the way that country operates."
Professor Toshio Miyatsuka of Yamanashi Gakuin University, a specialist in North Korean affairs had this to say about the case.
"In order to acquire foreign currency, North Korea is not limiting itself to drugs -- it's also producing counterfeit dollars and counterfeit cigarettes. North Korea is now using an old chemical factory that the Japanese army built before the war in the China-Korea border region as a factory for producing its stimulant drugs. Several years ago I went into North Korea from China for a tour, and without any doubt they were producing stimulant drugs there. There was this smell of rotten eggs, which is the characteristic smell that is produced when refining drugs. Come to think of it, when I went there this year in February, the plant didn't seem to be in operation."
Pyo'n Chin-il, editor of the Korea Report, offered his take on the case.
"For the Japanese mob, there is probably no other country easier to do business with than North Korea. Operating under a system that has the complete cooperation of the state, the gangs can give them detailed directions about everything -- from the production to the export of narcotics -- and not limit themselves only to stimulant drugs. Then the profits are taken to be guarded in Bureau 39 -- the "safe," as they call it-- under the Workers Party."
While U was imprisoned, North Korea shifted its policy for getting foreign currency from drug smuggling to counterfeiting cigarettes. Now in Asia there is a great flood of counterfeit Mild Seven cigarettes.
The spiral of illegality with this criminal state still has not played itself out and looks as if it will continue for the time to come.
