This explains a lot about the behavior inside of N. Korea if Meth is at the core of N. Korea's problems. What happens to people on Meth? Their brain rots so they can only live in a fantasy world. Reality isn't possible anymore because Meth destroys a persons brain and soon they die. Or if they don't die they need someone else to be responsible for them (not on Meth) because at that point they become children again who are living in a fantasy for as long as they live.
North Korea Has a Meth Problem, an Unstable Leader—and Nukes
Now
it has a crystal meth crisis. This can’t end well. The recent admission
of a British citizen that he had participated in a plan to move 100
kilograms of high-purity crystal methamphetamine from the hermit kingdom
of North Korea to the U.S. raises all sorts of questions. According to
reporting…
The Fiscal Times
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Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 1:32 AM EDT - U.S. Markets closed
North Korea Has a Meth Problem, an Unstable Leader—and Nukes
By Rob Garver
12 hours ago
The recent
admission of a British citizen that he had participated in a plan to
move 100 kilograms of high-purity crystal methamphetamine from the
hermit kingdom of North Korea to the U.S. raises all sorts of questions.
But for most people, the first one that pops up is, “Wait, North Korea
has a crystal meth problem?”
It
turns out it does, and it’s pretty serious. According to reporting done
by a number of international news organizations, the movement of
crystal meth over the country’s northern border and into China reached
epidemic levels earlier this year, causing a brutal crackdown by the
government on one of the very few elements of the nation’s economy that
the government doesn’t control.
The official response was not
widely advertised, no doubt because the official line out of leader Kim
Jong Un’s government is that there is absolutely no drug use in North
Korea.
Reports in South
Korean media, however, relying largely on the stories of defectors, tell
a very different story. In a country where food is often scarce,
crystal meth has in recent years become so abundant that a serious
addiction problem has taken hold.
The
crackdown is a recent phenomenon, but the production of crystal meth in
North Korea has been known, if not widely discussed, for years. Last
year, Vice News
highlighted the country’s struggle with the problem, which apparently
emerged from the government’s attempt to find new ways of raising funds
in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Related: Tensions Rise as North and South Korea Trade Fire
The
Vice report relied heavily on a study by Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens, a
Senior Fellow at the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the
Brookings Institution and an Academy Scholar at Harvard University’s
Academy for International and Area Studies. The report, Illicit: North Korea’s Evolving Operations to Earn Hard Currency, was sponsored by the Washington-based Committee on Human Rights for North Korea.
Among
other things, Greitens presents evidence suggesting that the production
of crystal meth, as well as heroin, was originally directed by the
North Korean government and conducted in government-run facilities. Over
the space of decades, North Korea became notorious in the diplomatic
community for sending abroad “diplomats” who would use their privileged
legal status to smuggle contraband across borders. In later years,
according to Greitens, the drugs began moving through connections with
organized crime syndicates from outside the country.
However,
the problem with state-directed industrial-sized manufacture of illegal
drugs is that it requires a substantial number of people trained by the
state to make the drugs to bring that knowledge home with them and
begin cooking meth in their own basements.
Related: North Korea Threatens Military Action If South Continues Loudspeaker BroadcastsThat is evidently what happened in North Korea, leading not just to addiction among the vast number of the country’s poor, but the adoption of crystal meth as a weight-loss aid by the country’s tiny minority of wealthy individuals.
It’s
unclear how effective the crackdown will be, though the government’s
near-complete control over the population creates the ironic possibility
that a country so beset by problems that most advanced nations have
largely conquered – like famine – might be able to conquer one that has
bedeviled its more advanced neighbors: drug addiction.
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