When it exports missiles to Middle Eastern countries and elsewhere, North Korea is known to disassemble them into bodies and core parts like engines, and deliver the bodies by ships carrying steel products, such as water pipes, and the parts by air. Pyongyang resorts to this means of transportation in an effort to evade surveillance by the United States using spy satellites and other means. Like huge water pipes, disassembled missile bodies, it is said, are easy to camouflage.
North Korea exports 1,300km-range Rodong and 300km-range Scud-B missiles to countries such as Iraq and Iran. "Warriors" of the Reconnaissance Bureau, General Staff of the People's Army, reportedly escort missile-transporting vessels and aircraft. Ships carrying missile bodies depart from Nampo or Shinuiju ports, while aircraft carrying essential parts take off from from Junghwa Airport in Junghwa County adjacent to Pyongyang, housing the Air Force Headquarters, or nearby Miryom Airport.
The firm handling missile exports is known to be Mount Yongak Trading Co., an adjunct to the External Economy Bureau of the No. 2 Economic Commission, which is in charge of the munitions industry. The financial arm dealing with proceeds from missile exports is Changgwang Trust Bank, tasked with handling funds associated with the No. 2 Economic Commission. The bank is said to launder American dollars received in payments for exported missiles into Japanese yen, Hong Kong dollars or German marks, before bringing them into the country. On suspicion of being engaged in Scud missile and other weapons transactions with Iran over several years, the bank was banned from conducting financial activities in the United States in January last year.
In its stalled missile negotiations with the United States, Pyongyang was reported to have requested that America pay it US$1 billion a year for three years in return for its giving up missile exports, leading to the assumption that this is the amount it earns annually.
The No. 2 Economic Commission, taking charge of the production and export of missiles, is said to run factories turning out missile bodies, engines, and warheads as well as one assembling them. Inaugurated in the early 1970s, the commission had been controlled by the Central Committee's Munitions Industry Department under the Workers' Party until its jurisdiction was transferred to the National Defense Commission in 1993 when North Korean leader, Kim Jung Il, assumed its chair and substantially expanded the defense commission's clout and role.
(Lee Kyo-kwan, haedang@chosun.com)
