Would Kim Sell Nukes?
His black-market deals raise that fear
Even for a rogue state, North Korea plays by few rules. Desperate for foreign exchange, the isolated regime has for years relied on criminal rackets to help fund its nuclear program and other activities. So extensive are smuggling and trafficking by North Korean diplomats that they have U.S. officials on edge that Pyongyang might now jump into the ultimate black market-the trade in nuclear material.
Pakistan's A. Q. Khan network, rolled up by the CIA in 2004, gave a chilling peek into the far-flung underground trade in nuclear technology. But while Khan's group dealt in weapons designs and equipment like centrifuges, it didn't trade in the essential materials for a nuclear bomb, such as the plutonium that North Korea now possesses. "If they're desperate for funding, they're likely to sell anything and everything," says Raphael Perl, a senior foreign policy analyst with the Congressional Research Service.
The North Koreans are no strangers to unloading contraband. Since 1976, their diplomats have been tied to at least 50 incidents of drug trafficking in 20 countries, and the regime is believed by U.S. intelligence to run industrial-level production of methamphetamine and heroin for export. Kim Jong Il's regime also is big in currency counterfeiting, producing at least $45 million in U.S. $100 "supernotes," according to a March CRS report by Perl. Counterfeiting of brand-name products brings in big bucks, too, including large-scale exports of cigarettes and even fake Viagra.
The varied criminal enterprises are thought to earn at least $500 million annually-an impressive contribution to a broken economy that legitimately exports only about $1.3 billion a year in goods. The regime has also earned huge sums as a top exporter of ballistic missile technology to such buyers as Iran, Syria, and Pakistan. Are North Korea's leaders renegade enough to add nuclear bombs to their for-sale list? Says Perl: "This could be a real 21st-century nightmare."
This story appears in the October 23, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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