That is a dialogue from the documentary "Children of the Closed State," which was shown three years ago on the BBC's Channel Four. Yaktanbei, "narcotic tobacco," is the Korean designation for opium poppy.
Journalist Joe Layburn conducted that interview with a peasant refugee from North Korea in a border region of northeastern China. Both Layburn and the farmer understood that, if the Chinese police caught the Korean, he would be sent back to face the death penalty.
Another North Korean refugee, Ahn Chol, arranged the interview for the British journalist. Ahn Chol had returned to North Korea several times to record the facts of life in that country with a hidden camera. In footage shot in 1998 and 2000, there are innumerable street children with swollen bellies waiting for death from starvation. They dig around in the dirt in the city's black markets hoping to find something edible. They pick up grains of rice and kernels of corn and suck on discarded fish bones. Around them, Western humanitarian aid is bought and sold-American corn, wheat from the Red Cross, rice. The price for the wheat, written on a piece of cardboard, is 80 won per kilogram. That is the average monthly wage of a North Korean worker. Most of the customers are members of the military.
More footage: a boundless field. Instead of potatoes, barley or corn, bright green plants with luxurious white flowers. Opium poppies. Lee Yong Hwa of the Osaka, Japan-based organization Save the North Koreans says that, after that footage appeared in the Western media, Kim Jong Il ordered his special services to find the man responsible for it and kill him.
The National Intelligence Service of South Korea says on its web site that the sale of raw opiates became one of the main sources of hard currency for North Korea in the late 1980s. The raising and selling abroad of opiates is coordinated by a division of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea known as Agency 39.
Between 4000 and 7000 hectares are planted with opium poppy in North Korea. The annual yield of that crop is between 30 and 45 metric tons.
The pharmaceutical plant set up in 1993 on the personal orders of Kim Il Sung in Nanam, not far from the Russian border, processes 100 tons of opium a year, producing cough medicine, pain killers and heroin. That heroin is shipped to Russia, Taiwan, Japan and China.
In 1995, North Korea tried to buy 28 tons of ephedrine hydrochloride in India and Germany. That substance is an important component for processing raw opiate into methamphetamine, the stimulant known as "speed." Taking account of the real needs of North Korea, the international agency for control over the production of narcotics approved the sale of 2.5 tons to the country. Later, North Korea was found to have made illegal attempts to buy more in Belgium, Hong Kong, France and Australia.
In recent years, Japan, Taiwan and China have been inundated with amphetamines produced in North Korea. Kim Jong Il uses the money from drug deals to outfit the army. As a communist, he knows very well that the goal justifies the means.
The US State Department agency for the control of narcotics says that the South Korean intelligence information cannot be confirmed due to the isolation of North Korea. Therefore, it also cannot be established that the manufacture and sales of narcotics in that Stalinist state occurs against the will of Kim Jong Il. If the data of the South Korean intelligence service is confirmed, the United States will add North Korea to the list of narcotics-producing and selling states, along with Afghanistan, Burma and Laos.
A 15-car train with tinted windows that is taking North Korean leader Kim Jing Il to Moscow. The North Korean dictator is being accompanied by presidential representative in the Russian Far East Konstantin Pulikovsky. He will have meetings with Russian president Vladimir Putin and chairman of the State Duma Gennady Seleznev. He will live for two days in the Kremlin itself. Kim Jong Il is surrounded by secrecy, as befits a drug baron.