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A particularly shameful case broke out a few years ago in Bangladesh when a North Korean diplomat was arrested at the Dhaka airport with around $ 1.4 million in gold in his bag. The situation was quite clear: Pyongyang’s state envoy from Singapore was trying to smuggle precious metals into another country. His fall was truly unpleasant, or would have been if he had not had diplomatic immunity, leading to his release in no time. Although customs officers didn’t have to be flashy to pinch her ears, they just had to get her to open her purse on her own, which she initially refused. But there was a lot of gold glittering in vain: The North Korean diplomat would soon be let down by the wind, who presumably sold his portico in the vast Dhaka gold market.
There are valuable treasures in the closed country.
The fact that North Korea is often banned and, bypassing past or current international sanctions, trades in the world, gives and buys weapons, raw materials, food, and even who knows what, has little novelty in itself. As Foreign Policy indicates, the main objective of these transactions is to provide income – hard currency – to the Kim family, who rule the country as a hereditary dynasty, consolidating their power. Gold is also nothing new in this.
North Korea is particularly rich in valuable minerals that are important to the world. Origo has previously compiled a build of this:
It is not known exactly how much gold they can reserve. North Korea said a few years ago that its natural reserves are around 2,000 tons, producing 12 tons a year. By comparison, in August 2020, the US still had the world’s largest central bank gold reserve, with more than 8,100 tonnes of molten gold. Interestingly, North Korea is said to also reserve molten gold – but exactly how much is a mystery, since the country is not officially affiliated with any foreign gold workshops and, again, only as far as they know.
But not only is gold an attractive opportunity for the regime and its diplomats, it seems to enchant government officials, military officials, and possibly others with its yellow glow. However, the closure of the city of Heshan, as can be seen from the outside, made it clear that when it comes to smuggling gold, Pyongyang does not tolerate competition.
The Storm Corps closed for 20 days, but there is still no news of an opening.
It is a border city in Rjanggang province with a population of 200,000, adjacent to the Hesanan Mountains. The common borders between China and North Korea are already among the most peculiar parts of the world, with a special microclimate not only in meteorological terms but also in cultural and economic terms, according to a major report released by Reuters two years earlier. This is reportedly especially true for this deal.
Hesanan is one of the northernmost cities in North Korea, which was under a military shutdown in early November for twenty days, but the shutdown has apparently not been lifted since. According to the Daily NK, a South Korean news agency that relies mainly on anonymous internal sources living in the country, another 2,000 soldiers from the so-called Storm Corps or Corps were deployed to the city in late November, armed to the ground. , to reinforce the total blockade of bribery.
The latter may even be important, since the soldiers were not commanded into the city to strengthen or replace the local police forces because the coronavirus would have escaped, citizens are not willing to comply with epidemiological regulations. North Korea officially denies that there is a coronavirus disease in the country, much less an epidemic. The purpose of the arrival of the soldiers was to maintain the desired order for the leadership of the state in the city and the province. Because, according to internal sources, the area was in crisis after it was revealed that senior local officials, provincial military cadres and even local law enforcement leaders were also involved in cross-border gold smuggling.
However, the arrival of armed soldiers did not calm the mood, on the contrary: according to sources from the Daily NK, an almost static austerity was introduced in Hesanan, which only increased the tension – as a local source says, almost pushing the province to the brink of chaos. “ Offices have been suspended and people are reportedly unable to leave their homes even for the most basic matters. It is not clear that this means that they cannot even leave the house to eat, but that they have to cope with the meager rations of head, because if they leave their houses, the soldiers will catch them immediately, or simply that although there is no touch From a total curfew, the city’s movement is also severely restricted.
It is true that what happened or is happening in Hesanan has reached Pyongyang, thanks to a report from the Ministry of State Security. An obvious sign of this is the deployment of military units. But it is also a sign that the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, Ri Pyong-chol, who is also a top adviser to Kim Jongun and is related to his wife, was recently assigned to the city. On the one hand, to put order, and on the other, to involve the discomfort in the case of gold smuggling.
However, in relation to the latter, there are more and more question marks. What is certain is that not only should the soldiers be able to deal with potential tensions among the population, but they should also take on their share of border guard duties after Pyongyang has apparently lost trust in local cadres.
At the same time, there is certainly a lot of pressure on Ri Pyong-chol, who has been put in order; again, writes the Daily NK, relying only on its internal sources, that the “Hesan incident” in Pyongyang is potentially seen as a threat to the very existence of the state as a whole, but at least its usual security.
The veracity or weight of this claim is, of course, difficult to assess from the outside, but many things can be seen: something has happened and is probably happening in Hesanan, of which there is not much known example. And this is probably due to food shortages: As a local source recently said, people living in the city and province will little by little mind if they are beaten on the streets to die, or in their homes, due to depletion of supplies. If, on the other hand, tempers are not controlled, Pyongyang’s fears that the unrest will spread to other parts of the country or that people will be moving en masse to the border with China may be justified.
But what about gold?
What’s really strange is that little is known about the actual nature of the gold behind the events. Now it has emerged that the disintegration of the troubled gold smuggling business began with the arrest of a bribed border guard whose partner fled to China. There he was detained by the authorities, it is not yet known what happened to him. Finally, the North Korean authorities, presumably the troops that were evacuated, also arrested six local residents in the action and later reportedly executed four soldiers who allegedly covered up the earlier smuggling. It turned out that the smugglers had their fifth trip since September this year, when they attacked them, after a North Korean special intelligence agency prepared the ground for it. In the action, 20 kilograms of gold were found in blocks.
And that puts the matter in a special light.
According to sources, before the closings, gold was worth 300 yuan a gram, or about 13.5 thousand guilders, in North Korea. According to the investigation, the smuggling gang moved 154.8 kilograms (5460 ounces) of gold on five occasions, valued at about 6.5 million dollars. At the beginning of November, due to the dazzling rise in the price of gold, the value abroad was already US $ 10.2 million, or about HUF 3 billion.
However, a completely different topic is the physical nature of gold, which according to one London expert certainly could not have been a gold bar. From 1983 to 1993, Colin McAskill oversaw the North Korean gold trade in London, the center of the world’s gold trade, when it was still near perfect.
The expert told the Asia Times that reports appear to have smuggled gold from North Korea at most in raw form or as mineral rock. Smelting, refining, then molding and having an official foundry mark is a gold processing process that North Korea cannot undertake. If this is the case, the smuggled gold will have to be melted and refined elsewhere and another authenticity logo will be affixed to it.
It is highly unlikely that [helyiek] they could smuggle gold already marked with North Korea overseas as it is easy to trace. If this happened, the host party would have to redial it to bypass it, which in turn would be a serious offense. “ Collin McAskill adds.
This claim is strange because the gold, on the other hand, was reportedly mechanized gold and not smuggled in some natural way. If, on the other hand, the truly “official” North Korean gold crossed the border before the smugglers were shut down, there are many questions about its origin and purpose, which are difficult to give a real answer from indirect information.
What is certain, however, is that according to sources, the detainees must be held accountable for one more thing in addition to settling for smuggling gold. And this is a violation of the rules of epidemiological isolation with cross-border action. – North Korea explains with the introduction of an early border blockade, even stricter than before, that according to state communication, the coronavirus is not present in the country.
But there is no answer as to why the information came in that the gold was already marked on the smugglers. If, on the contrary, this were the case, from Pyongyang’s point of view, it would justify the introduction of static conditions in the northern city, which, according to the available information, has not yet been resolved. So far, much is known: Kim Jongun, the number one leader at his desk, suggested that the local police and border guards completely reorganize themselves, exchanging personnel with those serving in other parts of the country, so entwined in the machinations in around the gold, soldier. and official.
According to a recent summary published by the Daily NK, conditions could be dire in the city of Hesanan, where dissatisfaction among the population only increases as the amount of food available decreases. Several corpses of homeless people who died of starvation were already found in the city’s train station during December.
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