N.KOREA SPONSORING DRUG TRAFFICKING

WASHINGTON, - North Korea, facing famine and short of
cash, is turning to state-sponsoring drug-running.

The Washington Post is reporting today that U.S. and international
drug officials say Korean diplomats have been captured in recent years
in several countries bearing large amounts of cocaine and
methamphetamines. South Korean intelligence sources and North Korean
defectors confirm North Korea's entry into the illegal drug business.

``The state is the Mafia,'' former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea
James Lilley told the newspaper, adding that North Koreans routinely
use diplomatic pouches - which are immune to customs searches - to
transfer drugs across international boundaries.

The Congressional Research Service reports that North Korea generated
about $71 million from drugs and $15 million from counterfeiting in
1997. The CRS said the figures are ``conservative
estimates.''

North Korea's international isolation has created a money crunch and
forced it to close most of its diplomatic missions while demanding
that those diplomats still in the field somehow earn hard currency and
send some of it back to Pyongyang.

An official told the Post: ``So these poor guys are sitting there trying to
spin gold from straw. I suspect that is where you get some of the drug
dealing.''

Some U.S. senators have demanded that North Korea, which they suspect
is using the drug money to finance its military, be included in the
state Department's annual drug trafficking report. The latest such
report says North Korea has as much as 17,300 acres in poppy
productions, which could yield as much as 4.5 metric tons of heroin.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, tells the Post: ``We want to know why, with
the indications we are getting the North Korean government is implicated in
drug production, there is not more of an effort to confront the issue.
We have got to stop ignoring drug trafficking and treating North Korea
like a 'most favored rogue state' in the hopes they will unilaterally stop
producing drugs.''

The newspaper said in January Interpol agents in Moscow searched North
Korean diplomats arriving from Mexico and found 77 pounds of cocaine,
with a value of some $4.5 million, in the pair's luggage. Last year
in Japan police seized about $100 million worth of methamphetamines
from a North Korean ship. The North Koreans had labeled the containers
``honey'' and officials were suspicious of a country experiencing a
severe famine exporting food.