{"id":12311,"date":"2012-02-14T00:02:38","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T00:02:38","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-02-14T00:02:38","modified_gmt":"2012-02-14T00:02:38","slug":"Hundreds-of-millions-of-counterfeit-hundred-dollar-bills-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=12311","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds of millions of counterfeit hundred dollar bills, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following up yesterday\u2019s post on the New York Times\u2019s article on counterfeit hundred dollar bills and evidence pointing to the North Korean government having forged them<\/a>, today let\u2019s look at a Vanity Fair article on the same topic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Vanity Fair wonderfully describes the network and system within North Korea and the international police work that found out what it did. It builds to a crescendo that in 2007 the U.S. had gotten close to prosecuting major players in a major counterfeiting network<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could have gone after the foreign personal bank accounts of the leadership because we could prove they were kingpins,\u201d Asher says. \u201cWe were going to indict the ultimate perpetrators of a global criminal network.\u201d \u201cThe world wanted evidence that North Korea is a criminal state, not a lot of hoo-ha,\u201d says Suzanne Hayden, a former senior prosecutor at the Department of Justice who ran its part of the Illicit Activities Initiative. \u201cThe criminal cases would have provided the evidence. It would have been in the indictments. As with any money-laundering investigation, we would have identified the players and traced them back, from Macao to those who were behind it in North Korea.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then suddenly some diplomatic wing of relations with North Korea stopped and even reversed everything.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Bush administration suddenly decided not to proceed. What Asher describes as the \u201cultimate non-aggressive containment strategy\u201d was unexpectedly curtailed. The reason: the administration believed that it risked provoking a permanent North Korean withdrawal from talks on its weapon and missile programs. Hayden says, \u201cSuddenly, the rules had changed. The diplomatic piece of this came swooping in, and the imperative became \u2018Let\u2019s get them to the table,\u2019 and that meant everything had to be ratcheted down.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can read the frustration in the article and hear it in the voice of the reporter in the video companion to the article<\/p>\n

[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4FJ0dO3kH2s[\/youtube]<\/p>\n

While I applaud the investigators’ efforts and found the article compelling, I see it underscoring what I wrote on strategy<\/a> and the difference between strategy and tactics.<\/p>\n

Catching counterfeiting and money-laundering is tactical, but North Korea holding South Korea and Japan hostage<\/a> gives it the strategic advantage. Strategy trumps tactics. As long as North Korea holds South Korea and Japan hostage, it can undo tactical wins like these.<\/p>\n

As great as the frustration the investigators, prosecutors, and reporters felt, I expect the bigger picture would frustrate them more. North Korea’s strategic advantage overwhelms nearly all attempts at change.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, DVDs smuggled into the country by low-level smugglers from China are reported to have an effect.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

EDIT: misperceptions of North Korea in the media as described in this post, leading to misunderstanding how we understand and commincate with North Koreans, led me to write my ebook Understanding North Korea: Demystifying the World\u2019s Most Misunderstood Country<\/a>. I wrote the book to help increase understanding, communication, and freedom.<\/p>\n

\"Joshua<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following up yesterday\u2019s post on the New York Times\u2019s article on counterfeit hundred dollar bills and evidence pointing to the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3442,"featured_media":48024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"randalwfhnapifzecroc","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b9bbe0d5419ed1301488f7790d59766f31160ba1d73ace6c537ff0e9a08c5f56?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Following up yesterday\u2019s post on the New York Times\u2019s article on counterfeit hundred dollar bills and evidence pointing to the","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["News"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":135,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":3,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg",0,0,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg",1,1,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg",1,1,false]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"randalwfhnapifzecroc","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=3442"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b9bbe0d5419ed1301488f7790d59766f31160ba1d73ace6c537ff0e9a08c5f56?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"News<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3442"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}