If true, that would approach the output of Colombia, the largest supplier of heroin to the United States. Despite repeated requests, North Korean officials declined an interview with U.S. News. The nation's opium production, they say, is strictly for medicinal purposes and is being stockpiled for use in war. Moreover, some drug control officials remain skeptical that North Korea is a major drug producer, among them Herbert Schaepe, secretary of the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board in Vienna. But we just haven't seen the evidence.
Defectors say that drug trafficking is, indeed, a state-run industry.
One defector interviewed by U.S. News, Bae In Su, says he worked for three years as a driver for the Communist Party's Foreign Currency Earnings Department, ferrying opium and heroin to port for export. The entire process, he adds, was controlled by high-ranking party officials. Another defector, pharmacist Ho Chang Gol, has claimed that the government ran more than 10 poppy farms to export opium. Given the tight control wielded by North Korea's security apparatus, U.S. analysts say that such large-scale production of illegal drugs could not exist without sponsorship by authorities in Pyongyang, the capital. Intelligence reports say that the trade is handled by Office 39, a party organ under the direct control of Kim Jong Il, which oversees production and then doles out the drugs to trading companies and diplomatic posts.