The Dark Printing Press--A Portrait of North Korea's Counterfeit Money Strategy 1990s to Early 2000s

The Dark Printing Press--A Portrait of North Korea's Counterfeit Money Strategy 1990s to Early 2000s

Amid the economic collapse and isolation of the 1990s, North Korea quietly began running its printing presses in order to prolong its own life and obtain foreign currency. The $100 bill, dubbed the "super note" by the U.S. Treasury Department, was produced with such accuracy that it was hard to believe that it was counterfeit. The bills were beyond the reach of normal commercial technology and would have been impossible without the involvement of a state agency. Behind the project were the Central Party, the Ministry of Security, and a secret department called "Room 39. They use diplomats and state-run companies to distribute counterfeit money around the world, and links to the Chinese Triads and Japanese gangsters also emerge. In particular, the Macau bank Banco Delta Asia made a name for itself as a money laundering transit point. Together with counterfeit Viagra and counterfeit cigarettes manufactured in parallel, North Korea was building a state-sponsored "criminal econom
y. This is not a simple counterfeiting case. Through the dollar bill, a symbol of national trust, North Korea has silently challenged the world order. The counterfeit bills were more than paper; they were "statements of darkness" inscribed with the intentions of the state.