TIME has a big piece telling you what you already know — North Korea operates like The Sopranos.
Read the entire thing on your own — here is just a sample:
According to Asher, the big worry among U.S. and Asian intelligence officials is that “the [North]’s growing ties to organized-crime groups and illicit shipping networks could be used to facilitate weapons-of-mass-destruction shipments.” Later this year, the U.S. is expected to go to trial in New Jersey on a case targeting alleged members of a Chinese organized-crime gang accused of moving counterfeit currency, illegal narcotics and contraband cigarettes from North Korea into the U.S.–in addition to at least $1 million in illegal weapons such as pistols, machine guns and rocket launchers. The question that worries officials from Washington to Tokyo to Seoul is, Asher says, “What could be next?”
(HT to ROK Drop)
7 Comments
I have always taught my classes that the “government of North Korea” is really just a particularly amoral/nasty group of mafia-gangsters, that pretends to be a religious cult, which pretends to be a nationalist/communist movement, which pretends to be the government of a nation. This ‘layers’ theory is the only way i can find to make sense of the DPRK…
So “sanshinseon”, they are actually a giant, evil, devil’s food cake?
This calls for lots of black coffee.
Shades of “The Layer Cake”, with Daniel Craig.
heh!
russian hookers and all?
#1
The South Korean movie director who was abducted by the North wrote in his book that Kim Jong il told him that everything was just for show (he’d know all the stuff written books is fake since he’s the one who hired the ghost writers). So, yeah, it’s like a cult run by gangsters.
I just remembered, I read that Kim Jong-il gives nicknames to the people in his inner-circle (a-la Sopranos).