Japanese police have identified at least three factories in North Korea that are suspected of manufacturing narcotics for the international black market, a news report said yesterday.
Investigators pinpointed the suspected amphetamine factories by questioning North Korean smugglers arrested in Japan, analyzing seized drugs, tracking boats suspected of smuggling the drugs and scrutinizing satellite photos of the isolated regime, according to a report in the mass-circulation daily, Yomiuri Shimbun.
The suspected factories -- in the eastern city of Wonsan, Chonjin in the northeast, and Nampo, southwest of Pyongyang -- are thought to be linked to the North Korean state, which uses government ships to smuggle the drugs out of the country, the Yomiuri said.
The report named as a source Hiroto Yoshimura, vice director of Japan's National Police Agency, who testified at a closed-door session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna on Wednesday.
The factories in Wonsan and Chonjin are both former pharmaceutical plants built by Japan during its colonial rule over the Korean peninsula in 1910 to 1945, the report said.
Police also have information on a possible fourth narcotics plant near the Yalu River on the border with North Korea and China, it said.
An official at the police agency headquarters in Tokyo refused to comment on the report. The official said he was not authorized to give his name to the media.
Japan has recently intensified its crackdown on drug trafficking operations with suspected links to North Korea, and has strengthened port inspections and boosted sea patrols.
In May, police seized a North Korean boat suspected of carrying amphetamines from the communist state to the Sea of Japan, where the crew allegedly dumped drugs overboard for retrieval by smugglers.
Police later arrested and charged seven Japanese and one South Korean for smuggling 237kg of amphetamines from the boat to Japan in 2002. Authorities suspect the ring ran many other operations.
It is widely believed that the North sponsors numerous criminal enterprises, including the narcotics trade, counterfeiting and money laundering.
Last year, a report by the US Congressional Research Service said the regime was earning about US$71 million per year through illicitly supplying drugs to 20 countries.
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