North Korea is drastically increasing heroin production to earn hard currency, Fox News reported on Tuesday. Analysis of satellite images of the Yodok political prison camp in South Hamgyong Province provided by Amnesty International on May 3 suggests that poppy fields on land around the camp grew by some 130,000 sq. m or about 15-fold since 2001.
"These are poppy fields and have been since we first looked at the camp in 2001," one expert told the tabloid channel. The North's total exports of heroin are estimated at around US$1 billion annually, Fox News added.
It quoted Chuck Downs of activist group Committee for Human Rights in North Korea as saying that the military, which runs the camps and poppy fields, does not "allow food production by prisoners because they would steal it. [It] would rather grow drugs."
Since the 1990s, when the North Korean regime first turned to making heroin, "production has seesawed depending on the success of other exports, like missiles." "Even more startling than the state's involvement in heroin production is its use of its diplomatic corps to beat customs inspections in order to distribute the heroin," claimed Bruce Klingner, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The regime is concentrating on heroin production due to recent price increases. In April, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said international heroin prices more than tripled from $69 last year to $281 per kg this year as a result of poppy blight last year and dwindling supplies after years of crackdowns on opium production and transactions.
And on the other hand:
A source from Yangkang Province reported to The Daily NK on the 9th, “There was a people’s unit meeting last week about a renewed crackdown on drug use. A decree from comrade Kim Jong Eun was delivered in the meeting calling for the ‘tracking down of those who produce, sell or use ‘bingdu’ (methamphetamines, otherwise known as ‘ice’ or ‘crystal meth’) and their severe punishment’.”
The source went on, “Starting with Pyongsung and Hamheung where most of the drugs are produced, the winds of the drugs crackdown are blowing all around the country,” but added, “This one in particular will not be easily completed because bingdu is used by everyone from middle school students to housewives.”
According to other defectors and inside sources, the Yangkang Province source is correct; the drug problem in North Korea is widespread and serious, with every level of society from military officials and high level figures through ordinary adults and even teenagers using them. Therefore, it is even said that “Drugs will be the death of this country”.
As a result of its widespread use at all levels of society, it is further assumed that the drugs crackdown will not succeed irrespective of how hard Kim Jong Eun attempts to clamp down. As one source said, “If they don’t get rid of the cadres first, the crackdown will be of no use.”
More on North Korea's addiction to crystal meth here.
Mick Hartley 
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