The director of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s secret moneymaking “Room 39” bureau has been fired, a news report said yesterday. Analysts said the move may be a way to get around international sanctions.
Kim Dong-un, head of the infamous Room 39 department, which is said to control Kim’s family enterprises, was replaced by his deputy, Jon Il-chun, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unidentified source familiar with North Korean affairs.
The National Intelligence Service, Seoul’s top spy agency, said it could not confirm the report. North Korean state media did not mention the personnel change.
Room 39 is described as the linchpin of the North’s so-called “court economy” centered on the dynastic Kim family. The department is believed to finance his family and top party officials with business ventures — some legitimate and some not — that include counterfeiting and drug-smuggling.
Room 39 oversees some 120 trading companies and mines, accounting for some 25 percent of North Korea’s total trade and employing up to 50,000 North Koreans, said Lim Soo-ho, a research fellow at the Samsung Economic Research Institute think tank.
He said the reported move to fire the Room 39 chief may be part of attempts to get around stringent international sanctions imposed on North Korea.
It was unclear which Room 39 companies or officials might be under UN sanctions, but North Korean firms frequently change names to evade scrutiny. And Kim, the Room 39 chief who was reportedly fired, had been blacklisted by the EU in December, making his movements in Europe difficult and prompting the change in personnel, Yonhap said.
UN Security Council sanctions were tightened against North Korea after a nuclear test last May. The order bans North Korea from exporting arms; calls for freezing assets, and forbids travel abroad for certain companies and individuals involved in the country’s nuclear and weapons programs.
The report came as the US renewed its call for the North to return to talks aimed at ending its nuclear weapons programs.
Assistant US Secretary of State Kurt Campbell made the comments yesterday during a meeting with South Korean Unification Minister Hyun In-taek in Seoul, Hyun’s office said.
The North wants a peace treaty with the US formally ending the 1950 to 1953 Korean War as well as the lifting of sanctions before returning to the disarmament negotiations it abandoned last year.
Campbell said no discussion about easing sanctions, a peace treaty or diplomatic relations can take place before the disarmament talks are back on track, Yonhap said.
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