The Service Service highlights the DPRK’s cutting edge in counterfeiting

WASHINGTON, April 25 (Yonhap) — The United States has to date seized some US$50 million of high-quality counterfeit American currency, commonly known as “supernotes,” first discovered 16 years ago and now believed to come mainly out of North Korea, lead investigators testified Tuesday.

But the latest trend shows the communist regime depends heavily on counterfeiting cigarettes for major income, smuggling at least one 40-foot container every month into the U.S., they said.

Testifying before the Senate in the first Congressional hearing on Pyongyang’s illicit financial activities, Michael Merritt, deputy assistant director of the U.S. Secret Service, gave statistics gathered from a global investigation.

There were more than 170 arrests involving more than 130 countries since the supernote was first detected in 1989 by a Central Bank cash handler in the Philippines, he said.

“Since then, the Secret Service has seized approximately $50 million of the supernote globally, which equates to seizures of approximately $2.8 million annually,” Merritt said.

“Through extensive investigation, the Secret Service has made definitive connections between these highly deceptive counterfeit notes and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK),” he testified.

As a reminder, counterfeiting used to be a capital offense.

Time Magazine profiles Tim Peters, founder of Helping Hands Korea, and highlights one refugee’s trek for freedom through China, Lao, Thailand, and into South Korea (Via. Helping Hands Korea)

ON A RECENT SUNDAY MORNING, PETERS stands at the pulpit of Youngnak Presbyterian Church, one of the oldest churches in Seoul. The congregation is more than 2,000 strong, joined together in a two-day prayer vigil for North Koreans. Though buoyed by Kim Myong Suk’s success, Peters is weighed down by the arrest of that American activist now jailed in Yanji, China, a man in his late 60s. He wonders who will take his place, and the place of other, older activists. “Where are the young soldiers to step into the place that older missionaries now fill?” he asks the congregation. He steps down from the pulpit, and the organist begins playing the anthem associated more than any other with escape from bondage. In Korean, 2,000 voices swell to sing The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

If you are in the vicinity of Maryland, then go see the Kim Jong-Il Genocide Exhibit at the First Korean Presbyterian Church of Maryland today and tomorrow.

First Korean Presbyterian Church of Maryland, 6410 Kenilworth Ave., Riverdale, Maryland 20737

(Via. Flying Yangban) It’s a straightfoward pamphlet on why China repatriates North Korean refugees. Just click on the link.