‘Supreme drug dealer’
Defector reveals Kim and his dad’s evil crimes, including making meth
PYONGYANG: A North Korean defector has described how he supervised the manufacture of crystal meth on the orders of “supreme leader” Kim Jong-il, one of many criminal moneymaking schemes undertaken by the former dictator.
The comments from the defector to the BBC came as Kim’s son and successor, Kim Jong-un, blamed the US for tensions on the peninsula.
America is the “root cause” of instability, he said in an opening speech at a defence
exhibition, according to the Korean Central News Agency.
Pyongyang is under multiple international sanctions over its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, which have made rapid progress under Kim Jong-un.
The Biden administration has repeatedly said it has no hostile intent towards the North, but Kim told the SelfDefence 2021 exhibition: “I am very curious if there are people or countries who believe that.” “There is no basis in their actions for believing that it is not hostile,” he added.
Meanwhile, the defector, who is using the pseudonym Kim Kuk-song, told the BBC that as an intelligence officer for 30 years he was ordered to raise “revolutionary funds” during the country’s devastating famine in the 1990s, known as the Arduous March.
“The production of drugs in Kim Jong-il’s North Korea peaked during the Arduous March,” he said. “At that time, the Operational Department ran out of revolutionary funds for the supreme leader.
“After being assigned to the task, I brought three foreigners from abroad into North Korea, built a production base in the training centre of the 715 liaison office of the Workers’ Party, and produced drugs. It was ice (crystal meth). Then we could cash it to dollars to present to Kim Jong-il.”
In 2009, the defector also helped set up the Reconnaissance General Bureau, which gathers foreign intelligence and is responsible for “special” work such as cyber attacks.
He said that in the same year he received orders to assassinate Hwang Jang-yop, a former high-ranking aide to
Kim Jong-il who had become the most senior North Korean ever to defect to the South. The order came from Kim Jong-un.
The plot was botched and the two assassins were arrested and are serving long prison sentences in South Korea.
The former spy also confirmed that the North was behind the so-called Wannacry ransomware attack in 2017, which affected 300,000 computers in 150 countries across the world.