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.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
RSS