'Japanese' send less money to help Kim nuke JPN

[Taro Toporific]

Japan money going to North Korea decreases
Sunday 13th February, 2005 (UPI)
Private Japanese funds flowing into North Korea last year fell nearly 35 percent from the previous year ago, a financial daily reported Sunday.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun cited unidentified Japanese finance ministry sources who reported the 2004 Japanese capital flow into the communist country reached $25.2 million (2.7 billion yen), its lowest level in four years....more...

[Captain Japan]

Taro, I was wondering when you were going to post this. So what are these "private" funds? Who's sending them? Why? We can't be talking about...


right?

[Taro Toporific]

Taro, I was wondering when you were going to post this. So what are these "private" funds? Who's sending them? Why? We can't be talking about...

BALLS!
It's perfectly legal for Japanese to send money to Kim Jong-Il's freakshow so it can better attack Japan. Since North Korea last week fully owned up to having nuclear weapons to strike Japan, you would think it would be illegal to give North Korea any money, but nooooo that's not the case. Sheesh.

[Kuang_Grade]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/politics/14korea.html?pagewanted=print&position=

New York Times
U.S. Is Shaping Plan to Pressure North Koreans
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 - In the months before North Korea announced that it possessed nuclear weapons, the Bush administration began developing new strategies to choke off its few remaining sources of income, based on techniques in use against Al Qaeda, intelligence officials and policy makers involved in the planning say.

The initial steps are contained in a classified "tool kit" of techniques to pressure North Korea that has been refined in recent weeks by the National Security Council. The new strategies would intensify and coordinate efforts to track and freeze financial transactions that officials say enable the government of Kim Jong Il to profit from counterfeiting, drug trafficking and the sale of missile and other weapons technology.

Some officials describe the steps as building blocks for what could turn into a broader quarantine if American allies in Asia - particularly China and South Korea - can be convinced that Mr. Kim's declaration on nuclear weapons last week means he must finally be forced to choose between disarmament and even deeper isolation. China and South Korea have been reluctant to impose penalties on the North.

To some degree the effort arises from Washington's lack of leverage over North Korea, and the absence of good military options, and it is far from clear that the administration's development of what one official calls "new instruments of pressure" will work. More than four decades of economic embargos of Cuba, tried by nine presidents, have failed, largely because European, Canadian and Latin American allies have not joined in. Nor have they succeeded against the Burmese, also a major source of drugs. The Secret Service has tried for years to halt North Korean counterfeiting, and Australia and Japan have tried to end its sales of amphetamines and heroin.

In interviews over the past three weeks, administration officials have denied that the renewed effort is part of an unstated initiative to topple Mr. Kim. But several officials say North Korea has stepped up its illicit trafficking and counterfeiting in part to make up for lost missile sales and a crackdown on cash transfers from North Koreans living in Japan, some of which are illegal.

[FG Lurker]