[5]: 6 The British academic Hazel Smith has argued that the allegations have a weak foundation, being largely based on the claims of a few US officials and North Korean defectors.
[7] Room 39 (or Office 39) is the primary government organization that seeks ways to maintain the foreign currency slush fund of North Korea's leader.
[13] The KNIC (which had offices in Hamburg, Germany and London, United Kingdom) was reported to have had assets of UK£787 million in 2014 and had been involved in scamming insurance markets and making investments in property and foreign exchange.
[14][15] The Japanese government accused the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan of conducting illicit trade and espionage on its soil to raise funds back to North Korea.
[21] Production began in the mountainous Hamgyong and Ryanggang Provinces, particularly in the village of Yonsah, where Kim Il Sung sanctioned the creation of an opium farm.
[23] To bring in much-needed cash, the international methamphetamine trade began, spreading first to China, and with the drug being made in state-run laboratories.
[26] The production, storage, financing, and sale of the North Korea's methamphetamine trade reaches multiple countries from the Philippines, the United States, Hong Kong, Thailand, western Africa and others.
[27] Between 1977 and 2003, more than twenty North Korean diplomats, agents, and trade officials have been implicated, detained, or arrested in drug-smuggling operations in more than a dozen countries.
In 1994, authorities in Hong Kong and Macao apprehended five North Korean diplomats and trade-mission members carrying around $430,000 in bills that turned out to be "superdollar" (also called "supernote") counterfeits.
The trade is believed to have begun in the 1990s and greatly increased in 2002 after Chinese authorities shut down many counterfeit operations in China, which then provided added incentive, knowledge, and capacity which could be relocated to North Korea.
[5]: 32 During a 2006 Congressional hearing, Peter A. Prahar of the Department of State quoted reports that mentioned the existence of "as many as 12" factories in North Korea capable of producing "billions of packs of counterfeit cigarettes annually.
[5]: 33 In 1995, Taiwan stopped a ship and confiscated 20 containers of counterfeit cigarette packaging, which is enough to make 2 million cartons of popular Japanese and British brands.
Countries which have North Korean forced laborers include Poland, Malta,[37] Russia, China, Mongolia, and other places in Central Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
[38] During the 1980s, North Korea emerged as a legal arms trader to primarily Third World countries, exporting relatively inexpensive, technically unsophisticated, but reliable weapons.
[1] Following its 2006 nuclear test, international sanctions have sought to limit or prevent North Korea from exporting various types of arms, materials, and technology.
[41]: 14 North Korea has developed an extensive and complicated arms trade network in an attempt to circumvent sanctions and uses front companies and embassies to traffic weapons.
[41]: 7 In December 2009, Thailand intercepted a charter jet from Pyongyang carrying 35 tons of conventional weapons, including surface-to-air missiles.
[40] In 2012, the United Nations reported that 445 North Korean-made graphite cylinders (which can be used to produce ballistic missiles) were seized from a Chinese freighter at the South Korean port of Busan on their way to Syria.
[43][44] Over the past three decades, at least 18 North Korean diplomats have been caught smuggling rhino horn and ivory, though the real number is considered to be much higher.
[45] North Korean defectors have also reported smuggling of rhino horn and ivory from countries like Angola, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Africa and Mozambique.
[46] According to the United Nations Panel of Experts in April 2019, North Korea had developed a number of techniques and a complex web of organisations to enable it to evade the sanctions against it, particularly with regard to coal and oil.
The Justice Department said the 17,061-tonne Wise Honest is one of the North's largest cargo ships and it was first detained by Indonesia in April 2018 but is now in the possession of the United States.
[48] As well as illegal money-making ventures, North Korea has been condemned for politically motivated criminal acts related to the long-running Korean conflict.
In 2017, North Korea was relisted as a terrorist state in response to the murder of Kim Jong-nam, its role in the Syrian Civil War, its close relationship with Iran, and its alleged backing of Islamic terrorist organizations, especially by providing financial, logistical, and military support to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas, Islamic Jihad in Palestine, its involvement in the [Yemeni civil war] which includes support of the Houthis, its support for various Syrian and Iraqi Shia fighters including [Kata'ib Hezbollah]], Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, Asa'ib al Haq and Bahraini opposition groups.
[60] According to cybersecurity experts, North Korea maintains an army of hackers trained to disrupt enemy computer networks and steal both money and sensitive data.
[62] White House officials treated the situation as a "serious national security matter",[63] and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) formally stated that they had connected the North Korean government to the cyber-attack.
[67] On 8 October 2018, Bloomberg reported a North Korean hacking group had tried to steal at least $1.1 billion in a series of attacks on global banks from 2014–2018, as uncovered by cybersecurity company FireEye.