For years human rights activists have launched balloons carrying leaflets and digital media into North Korea. At the same time, North Korea manufactures and circulates counterfeit foreign currency, including US currency. Is there an opportunity here?
The balloon campaign has gone on for years, supported by at least one western human rights organization and North Korean defectors located in South Korea. A New York Times article documented a claim that activists launch “between 700 and 1,500 balloons a year, each carrying 30,000 to 60,000 leaflets.”
At the same time, a Congressional Research Service report says that at times North Korea has earned from fifteen to twenty million dollars per year from counterfeiting:
The United States has accused the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) of counterfeiting U.S. $100 Federal Reserve notes (Supernotes) and passing them off in various countries … What has been confirmed is that the DPRK has passed off such bills in various countries and that the counterfeit bills circulate both within North Korea and around its border with China.
North Korea is also extremely poor. CNN published a story in April of 2017 that said two of Korea’s three major revenue sources were cybercrime and forced labor. Bloomberg published a story in December 2017 with a comparison between the North and South Korean economies:
In a report published by South Korea’s statistics office Friday, per capita income in North Korea in 2016 was estimated at 1.46 million South Korean won ($1,340), or about 4.5 percent of that of the South. Total trade volume was less than 1 percent of South Korea.
Also, on December 23, 2017 the United Nations Security Council approved a new set of sanctions on North Korea.
So, place these items side-by-side:
- North Korea is extremely poor and facing tightening international sanctions,
- North Korea is a currency counterfeiter,
- North Korea is unable to stop a multi-year amateur bombing campaign that drops anti-government media across the country.
My proposal: use those leaflet-carrying balloons to ‘airmail’ massive amounts of counterfeit North Korean bills from one end of of the country to the other.
If the US can in the normal course of business print official US currency, surely it can also print high-quality counterfeit North Korean currency. North Korea’s official currency is the won, which circulates in bills sized between ten and 5,000 won. I suggest printing the 5,000 won note. Thousands and thousands of them. If one of our balloons can carry 60,000 leaflets…well that’s a lot of won! (5,000 won X 60,000 bills per balloon X 1,500 balloons = 450 billion won.) Eventually, the North Korean currency will become worthless. The economy will collapse.
It was hard to believe I was the only one to think of this, and of course I was not. Researching this blog post I found the following article published by Forbes magazine: Bomb North Korea–With Its Own Money. Much more authoritative than this piece, and what a great title!
It would be easy and cheap. So why not? Maybe because it would be seen as an act of war and push the crazy little fat guy over the edge. Maybe because once you do it the cat is out of the bag and the US is vulnerable to the same trickery.
THE BOTTOM LINE
No one is going to do this, for a variety of reasons I don’t even know about. Someone should sell it as a movie concept.