Kim's Cash Flow: The Brutal Money System of North Korea | ENDEVR Documentary

North Korea abroad is like Game of Thrones, but without the dragons it is an aristocratic, capitalist society and everything is designed to ensure there is as much

cash

as possible for Kim. Office 39 is involved in everything that makes

money

for North Korea by selling weapons smuggling. of drugs counterfeiting of American bills this is hundreds of millions of dollars a year all I make dollars North Korea the pariah state a dictatorship shrouded in mystery every day the official newspapers praised the heroic deeds of the beloved leader who stood still here North Korea has the fourth largest army in the world for three generations, the Kim family has ruled the country with an iron fist, but how does the regime manage to survive despite severe UN sanctions and how does Kim Jong-un a has enough

money

to threaten the world with the most powerful weapon of all time the nuclear bomb abroad North Korea a history professor is working on the answers to these questions Remco Broiker of Leiden University in the Netherlands has been studying the enigmatic country and its rulers for years, he says, our image of North Korea is wrong, North Korea is not what it says, it is just looking at the functions of the country at the highest level, what is the main objective of the regime government, I should say it is making money, making money for Kim, which is intriguing.

For me personally, it's how North Korea manages to make money. One of the questions we ask ourselves is where the money goes. How much money does North Korea make for the North Korean leadership? Questions like these are dangerous. The North Korean regime sent a letter of accusation under my name to the Dutch government accusing me of three capital crimes the worst of the three was the accusation that our investigation my investigation was my name and harmed the Supreme Dignity of the supreme leader now this sounds as if it were a funny crime rates that harm the Supreme Court The dignity of someone in North Korea carries the death penalty a serious threat Remco investigations threatened to disrupt North Korea's

cash

flow

the country is internationally isolated due to its nuclear program without legal sources of income the regime has dedicated itself to illegally raising money New York the headquarters of the United Nations since 2006 the UN has imposed nine rounds of sanctions against North Korea these measures are monitored by an international panel of experts the panel It is made up of eight members, including former military and financial intelligence experts for their own security working secretly only the Coordinator Hugh Griffiths is willing to speak on camera.

The sanctions have a tremendous impact on one level on North Korea, meaning that their economy cannot flourish the way it would if they could legitimately sell their higher currency-earning raw materials. they cannot legitimately ship coal they cannot legitimately ship iron ore they cannot legitimately ship zinc foreign currency is very important for any country, no matter how prevalent your economy is, you need foreign currency to purchase the goods that are essential to your population or for its elite group, so foreign currency is quite essential to North Korea's survival, the question is what is more important to North Korea's leadership, developing a nuclear and ballistic missile program or seeing its economy.

The regime decided to search for the bomb in 2005, officially announcing that it had nuclear weapons as protection against attacks from outside and to strengthen its power inside Pyongyang, the city of new chosen apartment blocks, lined up impeccably clean. The avenues here are where Pyongyang's upper class resides, only those who consider themselves loyal to the regime. live here those who want to enter the capital from abroad need a permit song from the Pyongyang economic research institute is authorized to speak to journalists, for example, about the sanctions among the sanctions that have been imposed on North Korea are extremely strict I mean, there has probably not been a country that has been sanctioned in a different way, more strictly and at the same time is no longer working, there is a big problem with our policy on North Korea and the use of sanctions to try to get the regime modify its behavior because we are not saying anything, the only entity that makes most of its money, that gives it the financial float that keeps us alive, many high-ranking North Korean defectors talk about a secret government department who claimed to manage the secret funds of the regime, supposedly Kim Il-sung and his son.

Kim Jong-il created it in the late 1970s and gave it broad powers. His tasks secured an independent power base for the Kims and raised money for the leader's nuclear bomb and personal luxury. Its name Office 39 is just 200 kilometers southeast of Seoul, the hypermodern capital of South Korea, one of the 10 most expensive cities in the world. Around 25 million people live in the metropolitan area, approximately half of South Korea's population. South, including most of the 30,000 people who managed to flee North Korea KO Young Juan was a North Korean diplomat who escaped in 1991. He later became deputy director of South Korea's Institute for National Security Strategy.

Few people know more about the workings of the Kim regime than he does. everyone tells you that Office 39 is absolutely crucial to the income of the North Korean regime, it is absolutely vital to eliminate it, everything is collapsing here in New York, impose and monitor sanctions against North Korea, an entity as important as the Office should top the list of banned organizations the office 39 is usually mentioned by North Korean defectors. We don't really look at Office 39 in our investigations, but rather we are looking at North Korean banks and shell companies that traditionally operate overseas in third countries to generate foreign currency and then that money is sent back to North Korea.

Office 39 outside of North Korea is not called Office 39. No one identifies themselves as someone who worked for Office 39, so it's very difficult to impose sanctions on people you don't really know are active. Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since the 1980s North Korea has been acquiring foreign currency here in the heart of Africa KO Young Juan witnessed a particularly spectacular case at the time: the Foreign Office 39 never It acts openly but its fundraising activities spread throughout the world. World Heritage Site More than 2.5 million people visit ancient Khmer temples each year Selfies for tourists Foreign exchange for Cambodia Angkor Watts operating company earned more than $100 million in 2018.

Tourism is by far the largest industry here, a lucrative business also for the North. Korea, right next to the entrance to the temples, there is a museum that opened in 2015. At its heart is a 3D painting that represents the history of the Khmer Empire in monumental images. Crowds of tourists are guided through here every day, so the painter is from North Korea, they told him that it would take a year and four months to paint and who built it was Cambodian or North Korean, the North Korean, the constant dominance of Korea. North circumventing UN sanctions North Korea not only built the complex but also financed it in return the North Koreans collect all revenue for the first 10 years, then they will share the profits.

The North Korean chief executive doesn't want to go on camera, but says the museum will soon make about $7 million a year in admissions alone. This figure is supposed to double. They have maintained close relationships for decades. They were good friends. A solid foundation for current business ties. I want cameras in the restaurant, so we film secretly. Yes, we had a reservation yesterday. Yes, the tables are almost always full. We can also sit near the casino. Okay, so we sit here. Well, let's see. Yes. The menu features North Korean specialties such as. such as cold noodles and sea cucumber the prices are surprisingly high by Cambodian standards a main dish costs up to fifty dollars in particular tourists from China and South Korea visit the restaurant the young women who serve here are mostly art students from Pyongyang They live and sleep above the restaurant and are often not allowed to leave the premises for years.

That night, at the same time, they changed costumes and prepared for the big show. Abroad there are 130 such North Korean restaurants around the world, three of them in Cambodia, they are said to do. several million dollars a year but the waitresses are not paid for their work the dollars go directly to the secret coffers of the foreign regime no other country exploits its population as

system

atically as North Korea North Korean workers are deployed all over the world , even in the European Union in Poland Here we find North Korean work brigades on a construction site. They have been promised good wages and decent working conditions, only to be treated like slaves at night, after a 12-hour shift.

The workers are taken to their barracks. They are monitored. North Korean state security watch foreigner still one of them decides to speak um foreigner foreigner modern slavery North Korea sends well-trained workers to Poland to work in shipyards and on construction sites the workers' families are hostages in North Korea if the flea work the family at home is often severely punished the workers only have about 90 euros a month the rest goes to the Kim regime without the international community realizing North Korea has sent workers around the world up to 150,000 in total around 40,000 of them are in Russia and up to one hundred thousand in China.

North Koreans also work in Kuwait, Malaysia, Cambodia, Mongolia, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and in African countries under UN sanctions, these workers must return to North Korea, but the practice still continues, experts. They estimate that the regime earns up to a billion dollars a year in this way. Defectors say that Office 39 is directly controlled by Kim Jong-un, manages the secret accounts of the leaders, the so-called palace economy, but where Office 39 is located in Pyongyang and how many millions

flow

into its coffers when we ask the North Korean official that he and his translator pretend not to know the foreign is one of the best kept secrets of the Kim regime.

Only North Koreans who have escaped can talk about it openly. Alma in a secret location meets a man who used to work for Office 39. He was based in China. His task was to smuggle foreign currency and then he escaped. His position was so important that today the North Korean regime threatens to kill him. That's why he underwent plastic surgery to alter his face. yet he only wants to be filmed from behind to understand Office 39 and the capitalist structures of North Korea it is important to understand its history in 1991 the Soviet Union dissolves North Korea loses one of its most important trading partners while many former States Socialists now rely on market economy Kims continue to isolate themselves When Kim Jong-il replaces his late father in 1994 famine breaks out During the Great Famine in the mid-1990s many North Koreans starved to death Public dairy distribution

system

collapsed Witnesses describe seeing Mountains of corpses in the streets between one and three million North Koreans died, so what happened is that North Koreans now knew that if they wanted to survive they could no longer trust or rely on the State.

From then on, the rural population in particular had to be self-sufficient. Black markets began to emerge throughout North Korea. They are called Jang madang. All types of currencies are accepted, especially US dollars and Chinese yuan. Today there are countless markets of this type. type throughout the country, 400 of them are even officially licensed and provide tax revenue for the regime, mainly food and goods from China, are bartered and sold here abroad without having another public distribution system. People are dying of hunger and the North Koreans are not going to let that happen again. They know what happened last time with a socialist. country with a ruined economy to a capitalist country with a hybrid economy that looks socialist but is actually really capitalist.

The biggest beneficiaries of these black markets are Pyongyang officials due to their loyalty, but mainly out of financial self-interest that the regime allows them to trade over the years they have become rich they sell luxury goods, smuggle raw materials and invest in real estate they are called money lords they enjoy the luxury and freedom that the regime grants them, but their loyalty has a price that many donju consider superior government positions, even in Bureau 39. like this man who has been hiding in Soulsince he escaped, born in the 90s, he experienced how North Korea developed increasingly capitalist structures before his Escape, he was responsible for exports, Bureau 39's most lucrative business, fearing the regime's revenge, he too He doesn't want to be recognized abroad, thank you, at least in that sense North Korean entrepreneurs are no different from their Western counterparts. foreign brothers Hamburg Germany Until a few years ago the North Korean state insurance company Knic had a branch in Here, in an innocuous-looking apartment block, six North Korean officials made deals with major European insurance companies.

The European Union included the North Korean insurance company on its sanctions list over the accusation of co-financing the nuclear weapons program through Office 39. Experts estimate that With crashed helicopters and similar tricks, the Kim regime made several hundred of millions of dollars abroad, but how does the Kim regime manage to transfer the millions it earns to Pyongyang? The answer is simple through diplomatic channels. North Korea uses its global network of embassies to return the money by ferry. To Pyongyang, North Korean officials who enjoy diplomatic immunity carrying cash in their flight luggage is a simple but efficient way to ensure the flow of cash doesn't stop.

There is no screen. Embassies have a diplomatic function, but it is often primarily ceremonial, but the real function is financial. It is also illegal. Mainly North Korean diplomats are basically cash. Kim bearers are businessmen they are businessmen they may be drug dealers they may be arms smugglers but they carry a different musical passport so you can't touch them Berlin is the North Korean embassy the North Koreans have been renting one of the buildings as a hostel for tourists they have been earning 38,000 euros a month in rent by using the Embassy grounds for such activities, goes against diplomatic practices and contravenes UN and EU sanctions, but despite the efforts of the German authorities, the operations continue. for years like any other.

In other countries, the main purpose of embassies is to serve the state and the priorities of the North Korean state in particular, so because the sanctions are so broad, many of the activities carried out in these embassies may be prohibited. , providing training with military supplies and much of that has already been done. through North Korean embassies, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, of all Middle Eastern countries, the Syrian Arab Republic currently has the highest levels of prohibited cooperation with military entities of North Korea, the father of the current despot Syrian and Kim Il-sung. They were friends from the 1960s onwards, the North Koreans helped the Syrians during the war against Israel and supplied them with weapons and ammunition, a major source of income to this day, using tactics similar to those of the 18th century.

The Pirate Office 39 directs ships under false conditions. false flags and names according to the UN North Korea has thus managed to send large quantities of weapons and grenades to Syria between 2012 and 2017 at least 40 shipments from North Korea passed through the Sewer Canal but in 2018 the UN managed to get one of them intercepted, so we found some cargo on the way to Syria. They were acid resistant plates and valves that could be used in the development of chemical weapons, but also missile fuel is highly corrosive and such plates could be used for the ballistic missile program, as well as the leader list clearly. gave as its address in Syria a front company established for the Syrian Scientific Studies Research Center, the ssrc, which is responsible for a serious program of developing ballistic missiles and chemical weapons.

The Russians still keep the chemical weapons produced in these laboratories that have been used by the Syrian dictator Assad against his own people for years and many others who died in agony foaming at the mouth It is a little known fact that the Syrian chemical weapons program The Syrian Scientific Studies Research Center was created with the help of North Korean technicians and scientists. The SSRC facilities located near Damascus homes and other parts of Syria and some of these sites were later bombed by the United States. More than a hundred missiles were fired in the joint action against suspected chemical weapons sites.

President Trump declares mission accomplished saying the missile attacks on Syria by the United States, Britain and France were perfectly executed, the purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production and use of chemical weapons . Well, when the Americans bombed the chemical laboratories, they dumped the North Koreans there, yes, if they knew they were bombing the North Koreans. Don't know. I don't know, but they knew, yes, the North Korean presidents in Syria are actually very underestimated and underestimated, they have not been able to count on North Korea to sell their weapons, their guided missiles and their chemical laboratories, maybe Assad would not have emerged like a war winner. the fighting a third of all buildings in Syria have been destroyed a tragedy and a business opportunity the Syrian regime expects billions from international donors for the reconstruction of the country the necessary work brigades will come from North Korea the two countries signed a contract at a meeting in June 2019. dirty deals between despots the money earned by the office 39 goes directly to the front pages of the management it is used on the one hand to provide luxury goods it is used to pay for the Mercedes-Benz cars that somehow way they found their way into North Korea despite the sanctions, but it is also used and this is probably more important to offer the best hackers you can trade as early as in the mid-80s, Kim Jong-il began training children most talented in terms of mathematical and programming skills to become cyber hackers.

They are also good money earners. Ransomware like Wannacry Fires, for example, is considered to have come from North Koreans. It is the largest cyber attack the world has ever seen on hundreds of thousands of computers around the world. in some 150 countries have become useless now that the US government is publicly blaming that cyberattack called WannaCry squarely on Kim Jong-un's hacker army. British intelligence officials and Microsoft had previously concluded that groups associated with the North Korean regime were responsible for the wantcry hack Foreign computer specialists are hot on the heels of North Korean hackers Simon Choi works as a consultant for intelligence agencies from South Korea North Korea has limited access to the Internet, there are only a thousand IP addresses available for the country.

North Korean computer specialists use them to attack other countries. Experts estimate that between 600 and 1,300 hackers work for Kim. Experts estimate that up to $2 billion has been stolen by highly trained young North Korean hackers. The foreigner has developed an efficient education system for its upper middle class here in Middle Pyongyang. At school, children who will later become computer specialists, scientists and engineers receive training to shape the future of the country at home or abroad. Hello everyone, a pleasure to meet you. I'm here. I'm eight years old, but I still can't. I don't speak English I assume he speaks Chinese.

I only speak Russian too. I have the course. It's refined. Thank you. Students also learn how to use computers. They have access to a very limited version of the North Korean Internet. The uncensored variety is strict. banned with Korea's rulers know that once the doors of the digital world are opened, they can never be closed again, but despite all precautions, in 2007 North Korea faced the first digital data leak in its history because Much classified information is now available digitally. For example, data from the Pyongyang municipal registry with more than 2 million entries can be easily copied and smuggled out of the country.

Professor Broiker obtained a copy and is currently analyzing it using special software. We never had this type of updated information. effort if you want to understand the system the regime the party if you want to understand Pyongyang if you want to understand North Korea's economic activities inside and outside the country this is really the Rosetta Stone now we can start to analyze and map Pyongyang for the first time and now We don't depend on anecdotes from people telling us where all the buildings are, now we can see who is inside the buildings, what companies there are, what departments there are and where they should be located, the main building.

Office 39 is close to the seat of power in central Pyongyang, a stone's throw from the headquarters of the Workers' Party, is divided into six main departments and employs several thousand people. In Pyongyang alone they have their own fleet of vehicles, daycare centers, a golf course, an ostrich farm and even their own bank. These six main departments are in turn responsible for hundreds of individual companies throughout North Korea, controlling iron ore mines and Diamonds, jewelry factories and textile companies mainly specialize in exporting goods abroad. Other companies in the office earn foreign currency through forced labor, arms smuggling and insurance fraud, but one rule applies to all.

The name Office 39 is never mentioned outside of North Korea, so it remains invisible. Impossible for UN sanctions monitors for foreign detectives. North Korea is changing an impoverished socialist state. has become a country with a highly flexible shadow economy in many ways North Korea is run like a commercial enterprise, the only thing that matters is cash for Kim, the workers here no longer work as slaves for the revolution but for the wealth of their leader and his cronies. The gap between rich and poor is widening while the population in Pyongyang enjoys ever-growing prosperity. Forty percent of the rural population still suffers from malnutrition in order to control their people.

The regime employs socialist tactics from the Cold War era. On the other hand, North Korea's underground economy. is a 21st century capitalist what the database shows Without a doubt is that office 39 not only exists and now we can prove what it does owns companies operates these companies as they close exports exports tobacco exports all kinds of things and that's actually um a pretty important advance in understanding how North Korea manages to make money abroad and now we know exactly through what kind of departments and what kind of companies office 39 does this grandmother of Kim Jong-un make , a model factory, 1600 workers are employed here, most of them women.

They sought to process and boil the cocoons of silkworms to obtain the precious thread. The silkworms come from a province south of Pyongyang. About 200 tons of silica are produced here each year. A luxury, expensive and labor-intensive product. All of the factory's production is destined for export abroad. but supervisors are not willing to reveal who the foreign clients are. I'm no longer sure who suffers the sanctions. It's a nuisance. I'm the sheriff of North Korea, but I find ways around it. One of the problems is that neither China nor Russia. is um is helping to enforce foreign sanctions Textile factories are North Korea's second largest export after coal foreign thanks North Korea's gateway to the world and a symbol of how futile efforts are of the UN to deplete Kim's sources of cash.

The Korean Friendship Bridge over the Yalu River has connected China and North Korea since 1943. It is one of the few ways into or out of North Korea. Every day, trucks queue in front of the customs checkpoint. Smugglers, traders and also Bureau 39. agents and businessmen all hope for a quick deal here China is by far North Korea's most important trading partner. Financial experts estimate that 90% of North Korea's exports go to its powerful

north

ern neighbor. It is said that thousands of North Koreans work in textile factories in the region disguised as businessmen and equipped with hidden cameras. We filmed in one of the factories.

Chinese textile companies hire North Koreans because their salaries are lower than those of Chinese workers. These seamstresses They work day and night and often sleep on company premises where they are likely to be locked up for years away from their families along with a team of labor lawyers, trade experts and data specialists, ramcobroker tries to find out if European brands work with Chinese companies that employ direct orindirectly to North Koreans, but we discovered different things and one of What we were actually hoping to establish was the use of North Korean workers in Chinese factories, but what really surprised us was that yes, we have North Korean workers working in slave-like conditions in China, but more than that in Chinese factories.

Subcontracting to North Korean factories In North Korea we have managed to demonstrate the existence of a significant amount of North Korean slave labor in the supply chain of some of the main clothing companies in the world, basically in Europe and the United States. We have come to an agreement that we no longer want to find slave labor or child labor in our supply chain, so there are all kinds of agreements, but if you look closer at some of these producers, you discover that sometimes up to 90 percent of production is not carried out. In China it is not carried out in the factories where European and American auditors come to check whether working conditions are decent.

Yes, they are in those factories, but that is only where 10 of the products are made and the other 19 come from North Korea. The team took a closer look at a Chinese textile company. It's called vondest. Its website states that the company depends on low labor costs and abundant human resources. Their client list reads like a who's who of international fashion brands. The website features a men's jacket next to it, he says. Imported Korean, the buttons carry an Armani jeans label Using trade databases, the broadcast team analyzed Long Desk's trade relationships between 2013 and 2019. The databases use Customs data that shows what goods are shipped from one place to another between companies from different countries, so what happens is that China sends the materials to make certain types of clothing to North Korea, a month later, they are placed again in the same container and then it is finished closing, that Clothes are sent back to, say, the Netherlands, Germany or the United States and from there they are distributed to our stores.

Between 2013 and December 2016, Vondest sent around $10 million worth of fabrics and raw materials to North Korea; During the same period, Vondest received nearly $25 million worth of Finnish clothing from North Korea. Customs classified the textiles according to the so-called HS codes. a women's sweater for example, has a different HS code than men's jeans. Let's take a closer look at the HS code 6201. It stands for men's anoraks and jackets like the Armani jacket on the website between 2013 and December 2016. vondest imported $12 million worth of clothing with this code from North Korea. The same code is also used for deliveries from Von Desk to Europe and the USA among Armani customers.

Armani jackets which are exactly the same as the one on the Von website can also be purchased in Europe this one costs 219 euros cannot be proven Without a doubt where garments like this are made in North Korea but it can be ruled out we asked fashion brands writes Amani, we confirm that vondest is one of our suppliers and, as such, is regularly subject to checks and inspections, the result of which is that no finished product is manufactured in North Korea like all our suppliers, it is also required to declare which subcontractors it uses. and as far as these are concerned, it is also the case that there are none in North Korea.

We also communicated with Von dest in writing. The company did not offer any explanation as to why and to what extent it trades with North Korea. One thing can be said with certainty: well-known fashion brands manufacture their products by a Chinese company that cooperates with North Korea, a country where workers have no rights where human life counts for nothing. Breuka's research shows that this is not an isolated incident for years and years we have heard testimonies from the North The Korean skps who were in concentration camps today had been forced there to produce textiles for the export markets for a famous Western branch and I think for the first time I have been able to corroborate that through an external source or not through a testimony in the In the same database I found the department of the bureaucratic department that is responsible for managing the production of textiles for one of the concentration camps outside, which means that not we only buy clothes produced by forced laborers, maybe even slave labor, we can even buy clothes in the Netherlands. in Germany, all over Europe, in America, which was made in concentration camps by people who will never see the last day again, these are the kind of camps you don't get out of until you dance, that's too horrible to express With words and very complicit, hundreds of thousands of men and women secretly guarantee the survival of the dictatorship.

Their futures are sacrificed for the luxury of the regime and for our prosperity. Kim Jong-un is not a crazy dictator but a coldly calculating businessman who runs his country like a company his office does business with everything and everyone, including us foreigners