North Korea's Shady Transnational Business Activities and Their Future Prospects

IntroductionGlobalization has made the world much smaller than it was. The use of sophisticated technology and communications networks has made our lives more convenient, but at the same time it has also helped criminal elements become more efficient in their dealings. Transnational criminal networks and their activities remain one of the main concerns of governments today. Yet, what happens if the networks themselves are government-sponsored? Is there a possible solution when criminal elements themselves are supported by state organs, and sheltered under the eyes of the military and secret service?Such state-organized crime partnerships take criminal activities off the traditional street level and place them on the same pedestal as state activities. In other words, diplomatic, immigration/customs, and military resources have to be deployed to counter criminal activities that are equally supported by these resources. When politics, especially international relations, is involved, the situation becomes more fluid and complicated. State sponsorship can take place in two forms. The first is a more direct form, whereby criminal networks are integrated with a country's agencies, such as the military or the secret service. The second form is less direct-mafia and organized crime from other geographical locations seeking shelter from a willing state to protect their activities.The end of the Cold War may have signaled the demise of Stalinist-style state dictatorship (with a few exceptions) and nuclear confrontation, but its remnants continue to be active in several sectors, such as terrorism, the survivalism of pariah states, and their regrouping into a transnational criminal network. This is the subject of this paper, whereby the world's last remaining Stalinist state, North Korea, shelters or actively abets a handful of criminal networks in order to bypass the global power of the United States, the winner of the Cold War. The criminal network is formidable, as it spans the globe and utilizes gang, banking, diasporic, and state resources to overcome difficulties that would have been formidable without state help. It presents an interesting challenge for international law enforcement agencies and customs/immigration departments, as well as diplomatic corps. When criminal activities are combined with global politics, the scope of legal enforcement is vastly expanded.There are several distinguishing features that differentiate state-sponsored criminal activities from normal transnational criminal activities. The older criminal networks tend to have a kind of chivalrous code, to convey a sense of an urban legend, the image of vigilantes robbing the rich to help the poor. Yakuza and Chinese gang networks tend to convey such noble aspirations. Some make donations to public causes to legitimize their image in the eyes of the public. Japanese Yakuza have done this quite effectively. State-sponsored criminal activities do not share these concerns. They tailor their activities to the priorities of the state. In North Korea's case, this would be survival despite sanctions and other U.S. pressures.The normal transnational gang networks tend to base their activities on streetlevel trafficking, prostitution, and other traditional areas of crime, with clearly marked-out territories. State-sponsored organized crime networks do not have clearly marked-out borders and deal with any transactions that would yield a profit. Because they have the vast resources of the state (for example, the use of military boats and secret service intelligence), they are better able to diversify under the protection of the state, without the need to find niches for their criminal activities.All organized crime monies need to be laundered. Normal transnational criminal networks need to do this discreetly, through many layers of exchanges or wireless transfers of monies. Often these transfers involve much bureaucracy, sometimes elaborate stealth methodologies and even bloodshed. …