Meth in North Korea

Former North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-ho, who defected in 2016, says North Korea engages in state-sponsored drug trafficking, and is also now trying to fix a widespread domestic drug addiction epidemic.

“In North Korea, the drug addiction is really, really a problem,” Thae told Yahoo Finance on the sidelines of the 2019 Oslo Freedom Forum. “… [Meth is] even produced by individual families in North Korea.”

While statistics on the drug addiction problem in North Korea are scarce, several reports have emerged that fill in some gaps:
– “Meth, until recently, has been largely seen inside North Korea as a kind of very powerful energy drug — something like Red Bull, amplified,” Andrei Lankov, an expert on the North at Kookmin University in Seoul, South Korea told the New York Times.
– Youth addiction has become a serious social issue, the Daily NK noted earlier this year, with many people in their 20s and 30s — and even high school students — drinking and smoking crystal meth at “birthday parties.”
– According to a report by Radio Free Asia, crystal meth was a “best-selling holiday gift item” during the Lunar New Year.
– The situation has gotten so bad that the country has “developed” an injectable selenium, which can be used to treat the addiction, according to state media.

North Korea’s role in the meth trade is nothing new, Thae added. He said that most of the production was located “mainly in Hamgyong, in pharmaceutical factories.” The country’s second largest city, Hamhung, which is in the southern part of the Hamgyong province, is known to be a hub for crystal meth production.

But despite the country’s production over the years, “the international police system has not found any” evidence, Thae noted.

[Yahoo Finance]

This entry was posted in DPRK Government, North Korean refugee, Uncategorized by Grant Montgomery.