N KOREA DEFECTORS DETAIL DRUG RINGS

IN a dramatic confession to the US Congress, two men identified as
high-ranking North Korean defectors today said they had been intimately
involved in test-firing Pyongyang's missiles in Iran and a state-sponsored
drugs ring.

The men, led into a congressional hearing wearing black hoods, gave
evidence behind a screen to conceal their identities. They currently live
in South Korea, but were brought to the United States by two refugee
advocacy groups.

Their appearance came as the Bush administration tries to turn the
spotlight on North Korea's alleged criminal behaviour after making little
obvious progress to end a simmering crisis over the communist state's
nuclear weapons programs.

Journalists and members of the public were asked to leave after three hours
as the subcommittee of the Republican controlled Senate governmental
affairs committee opened a final classified session in which the men
promised to divulge highly sensitive data.

But one witness, using the alias Bok Koo Lee, told the open portion of the
hearing that he worked as a missile scientist for nearly nine years at
Plant 39 in Huichon, Jagang Province, North Korea before defecting in July
1997.

He said in summer 1989 he became an unwitting pawn in Pyongyang's nascent
missile technology export plans.

Bok said he was ordered to go to Nampo seaport, dressed in military
fatigues and locked inside a freighter for a sea voyage of about 15 days.

When the ship docked, he was taken aboard a missile guidance control
vehicle with curtained windows on a two-day journey to a secret location.

"Although it was night-time, we could see and immediately we realised that
we were in a Middle Eastern country, judging by a foreign soldier and his
physical make-up," Bok said.

The small team of scientists activated and fired the missile from a remote
site, before immediately being returned to the ship for a 15-day journey
back to North Korea locked in the hold.

During a visit to Pyongyang on his return, Bok said he was told by senior
North Korean officials that his mission had been to Iran, and testified
that his plant subsequently churned out more of the missile control
vehicles he had worked on during the project.

Bok alleged 90 per cent of components used in his work inside the North
Korean missile project were smuggled in on scheduled ferry services from
Japan, every two or three weeks.

His compatriot, identified only as defector number one, said he was a
former high-level government official in the Stalinist state.

"North Korea must be the only country on earth to run a drug
production-trafficking business, on a state level," he said.

He alleged Kim Jong-Il's regime, desperate for hard currency, produced
large quantities of heroin and methamphetamines.

Opium was sent to a pharmaceutical plant in Chungjin city, and "processed
and refined into heroin under the supervision of seven to eight drug
experts from Thailand", he said.

"This is all done under the direct control and supervision of the central
government."

Senator Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, who called the hearing, charged that
North Korea was "essentially a crime syndicate with nuclear bombs".

"The role of a government is to protect its citizens from criminals. But,
in the case of North Korea, it appears the government is the criminal."

Academic experts at the hearing showed data suggesting a huge shortfall
between Pyongyang's expenditure, especially on its military, and its trade
balance, suggesting Kim Jong-Il was using ill-gotten gains to prop up his
regime.

"Like the regime of Saddam Hussein, the Kim Jong-Il regime resembles a
cult-based, family-run criminal enterprise rather than a government," Larry
Wortzel, a policy specialist at the conservative Heritage Foundation told
the hearing.