the port of Newark in the U.S. after leaving from China.

On this particular day, F.B.I. and Secret Service agents were lying in wait, believing

that some containers on this ship might be carrying something of interest.

They were right, but what they'd find was more than they had bargained for.

Under boxes filled with an array of plastic toys they discovered secret compartments that

contained hard cash, except the money was only in $100 bills.

The notes they beheld were flawless, faultless, and to anyone but an expert gifted with the

right technology, those notes were just as good as the real thing.

But they weren't the real thing, they were counterfeits.

Almost perfect counterfeits.

Where had they come from?

Who had invested the time and money to create such flawless notes?

The authorities understood immediately that to make such consummate currency you'd need

very advanced technology.

These were obviously by no means your run of the mill counterfeit notes.

The experts who looked at them couldn't believe their eyes.

This was a huge problem.

The U.S., being what we call the “world's currency”, is very, very difficult to recreate

perfectly, but someone had done it.

When the authorities took these bills to forensic analysts, what those analysts saw before them

was the perfect composition of fibers used in the real bills.

They even commented that the engravings were possibly of a better quality than those created

by the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

The fakes were in one sense even better than the real thing.

They came up with a new name for these bills, and that was the “supernote”... almost

perfect imitations that would fool just about anyone, from the man in the street to the

teller at the bank.

Hell, if you could create enough of these things you could spend until your heart's

content and have little fear about getting caught.

Since the discovery of the first super 100 dollar bills, millions more have been found

on container ships with loads destined for the USA.

But who was making these supernotes?

Following the discovery, investigators in the U.S. started a series of operations such

as “Royal Charm” and “Smoking Dragon”. at first thinking the counterfeits were being

made by powerful gangs originating in Asia.

Unlike many organized crime outfits that traffic drugs and guns in the West, Asian gangs tend

to work quietly and share a high degree of sophistication.

But when the investigations started paying off and links to these gangs were arrested

on American soil, the authorities shocked the world.

They said that it wasn't the networks of organized crime that were actually making

the fake money…it was the government of North Korea.

The gangs, they merely spread the money around.

In no time at all, North Korea denied this accusation, but the U.S. said that the evidence

they had was more than sufficient.

North Korea was a money-making machine, they said, and the technologies the country used

were second to none.

What ensued was a bank in Macau called “Banco Delta Asia” being shut down, and with it

the accounts of some of North Korea's ruling elites.

The bank was accused of taking counterfeit cash and then laundering it in the world of

real money.

This shady kind of business was all run through something called Room 39, North Korea's

department of dark money.

Or at least that's where all of the evidence pointed to- or what evidence was available.

Was this such a big deal at the time, seeing as the world was watching in fear as their

TVs told them that the secret nation was hellbent on creating weapons that could bring us all

down?

The answer is yes, it was a really big deal, with some U.S. officials calling it an “act

of war.”

You see, when counterfeiters are merely street level hustlers doing a bad job recreating

cash, or even organized crime giving it a shot, it's not seen as such a large threat.

People have been counterfeiting cash for many years, since the time when you could have

been hanged, drawn and quartered for trying to fake the “king's coinage.”

But one state doing it against another…that could be said to be a hostile act under international

laws.

The U.S. came right out and said that by counterfeiting another country's currency you are in no

uncertain terms a “threat to the American people.”

As we said, the branch of the North Korean government responsible for such criminal enterprises

is known as Room 39, or Office 39, or Bureau 39…It's all the same thing.

How do we know this entity exists since North Korea isn't exactly giving tours to U.S.

officials and investigators and showing them exactly how things are run?

The answer is high-ranking North Korean defectors.

Some of these folks have come out and said the most unbelievable things.

Word on the street is that Room 38 deals with the cash made by Room 39.

Room 35, though, that's in a league of its own.

That's the office that focuses on assassinations and kidnappings.

There are also reports that Room 39 is behind the production of illegal drugs on an industrial

scale.

We are talking meth labs that would impress the fictional Walter White.

The drugs can be made in North Korea under the eye of the government and then sold around

the world for those American dollars the country likes so much.

Since North Korea can't really make money on the international market due to sanctions,

one way to make dollars is to go through the black market.

Room 39, if you like, is the back market HQ for North Korea.

While many folks seem to believe the majority of the world's narcotics come from South

America and through Mexico, what's often under looked and perhaps not “Netflixable”

enough, is the fact that many of the world's drugs are actually coming out of Asia.

All kinds of drugs can be made in countries such as North Korea, or in parts of Myanmar,

and then through Asian gangs, shipped around the world.

Methamphetamine labs have been a great source of income for North Korea during harsh international

sanctions.

But ice isn't the only order of the day…it's reported that the country also has many poppy

fields and has for a long time.

The raw opium is then turned into heroin, and that heroin finds its way into Asian countries

and subsequently to North America and Europe.

If the country wasn't so closed off, we might have seen a “Narcos: North Korea”

show.

Experts writing about the country tell us that the meth production began not as a money-spinner,

but as a way to keep North Korean soldiers alert and awake.

No surprise there…there isn't a military in the world that hasn't given its troops

some kind of speed at one time or another.

In the 1990s the country hit a wall when there was a very bad opium crop harvest and North

Korea saw dope profits fall drastically.

Officials who were hit hard by this, put their heads together and said why not start using

state facilities and start making methamphetamine and trafficking it abroad.

Meth isn't ever prey to a bad harvest, and the officials agreed to knock up some labs

under state-owned companies and then get in touch with various Asian criminal networks

in China, Myanmar and Thailand.

Think about it…if North Korea can produce the best banknotes that forensic analysts

have ever seen, what kind of meth could the country make?

Perhaps Kim Jong-un and his cronies are Breaking Bad on a scale that would literally blow our

minds.

But North Korea isn't immune to its own drug problems.

One expert said recently the government has cracked down on meth production, since the

country now faces a meth epidemic.

It isn't that the government was selling it to its own people, but that some North

Korean citizens had created their own labs.

Private enterprises were creating the meth and then paying bribes to state officials

so they could keep producing.

Those officials were paying other officials and in the end everyone turned a blind eye

and got paid.

If the bribe wasn't paid, as happened in 2019 when a woman was given a prison sentence

of 10-15 years, you went straight to jail.

The “donju”, which means the elites or masters of money, will get paid by these private

drug dealers and traffickers.

If there is a crackdown, according to some sources in North Korea, any donju doing deals

with the public will be notified before the bust.

If that sounds confusing to you, what some inside media tell us is that the government

isn't happy about the average citizen getting in on the drugs business, and so they are

being taken out.

However, if they are connected and pay their way in bribes, officials are happy to look

the other way.

So who pushes North Korea's dope?

The answer might surprise you.

Scores of trade officials and North Korean diplomats have been arrested for trying to

sell NK-made medicinal amphetamines and benzodiazepines worth millions of dollars abroad.

This kind of thing goes back many years, and each time the North Korean government has

said the diplomats went rogue...that they weren't giving the profits back to powers

that be.

No one really believed this, of course.

One defector said in 2018 that Room 39 was about one thing and one thing only, and that

is to supply the great leader of the country and his cronies with money.

He called the money raised a, “revolutionary fund.”

He said some of the exports controlled by this room are in fact legal, but of the $639

million to the $2.5 billion made each year, a lot of the income is from illicit activities.

This has been called a royal slush fund, and if you don't know what a slush fund is,

it's what you might call dark money earned by corrupt means.

He said he worked for the Kumgang trading company, which dealt in gold, gemstones and

ginseng.

Because there are sanctions on North Korea, part of his job was to smuggle the products

across the border into China and from there it would reach the international market.

That's hardly the crime of the century, but defectors have also said that another

product being smuggled out of the country is weapons.

Those weapons might make their way to organized crime or countries devastated by internal

conflict.

North Korean weapons have ended up in countries in Africa, South America, and the Middle East.

Another type of crime North Korea engages in might surprise you.

Insurance fraud hasn't been talked about very much in the media.

North Korea's Room 39 is said to have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from international

companies working as reinsurers, which means offering protection for insurance companies.

North Korea has denied it, but investigators have said that the country has made fraudulent

claims on a helicopter crash, two train crashes and a ferry sinking.

Other dubious claims have been related to crop failures, mining accidents, fires and

floods.

The state-owned Korea National Insurance Corporation will initially take the risk, but then that

is passed on to international reinsurers from various countries in the world.

Reinsurers in Europe, India and Egypt were all involved in the payout for that helicopter

crash, which some investigators say was staged.

An expert who spoke some years after the crash said one lesson had been learned, and that

was, “Never agree to have disputes decided in a North Korea court and never reinsure

KNIC.”

So if the North Korean people are starving, where does all this money go?

While a lot of this cash coming out of Room 39 goes towards the military and the country's

nuclear program, most of it fills the pockets of the country's leaders and very little

goes to the people who need it most- North Korea's citizens.

A lot goes to the super-rich of North Korea, like when the Italian government blocked the

sale of two luxury yachts to North Korea in 2009.

Room 39 was behind the purchase, and the boats were worth more than $15 million.

Reports have also surfaced that through this office, North Korea has illegally imported

hundreds of luxury cars, vans and other vehicles.

As a report stated in 2010, “Criminal proceeds are distributed to members of the North Korean

elite (including senior officers of the armed forces); are used to support Kim Jong-Il's

personal lifestyle; and are invested in its military apparatus.”

But for a country most consider technologically backwards, North Korea has another criminal

surprise waiting for you.

Reports in 2019 stated that North Korea's hackers stole around two billion dollars from

banks and cryptocurrency exchanges in 17 different countries.

Hacking might have become the country's newest and most profitable way of making money,

and all without the risk of being stopped by customs officials and having their product

confiscated.

By now, it's sure that North Korea has made far more than the two billion dollars originally

stated, making hacking extremely lucrative for North Korean cyber whizzes.

What will come out of Room 39 next we don't know, but we expect more nefarious cyber activity

to be on the cards.

North Korea has tried a lot of things, including the illegal export of fake Marlboro cigarettes

and its own version of Viagra, but it's likely that the hacking game will be the way

ahead as long as there are sanctions on the country.

As for the meth and the opiates, there will always be a market for that as long as North

Korea can keep getting it through the large border with China.

As one defector put it, “The only way to earn hard currency is by drugs.”

Time has proven him wrong, and now North Korea's criminal enterprises exist in both the real

and the cyberworld.

Still, don't be surprised if some of the drugs on the streets in the USA and elsewhere

start coming with the label, “Proudly Made In North Korea”.

Now you need to watch this video, “What It Is REALLY Like Living In North Korea?”.

Or watch this, “A Day in the Life of North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un.”