South Korea Presses North on Counterfeiting, Announces Arrests in Sale of False U.S. Notes

NTI: A senior South Korean official today demanded that North Korea end suspected counterfeiting and laundering of U.S. currency, Reuters reported.

“We believe the North must take the steps necessary to answer to international suspicion,” said Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry announced last week that Pyongyang planned to “join international actions against money laundering,” Reuters reported.

“We hope that these comments lead to action,” said Ban, who announced his candidacy today to succeed U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan (Reuters/Yahoo!News, Feb. 14).

Ban said his election to the post could have “positive effects on efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue,” the Associated Press reported (Jae-Soon Chang, Associated Press/Forbes.com, Feb. 14).

Seoul also announced yesterday the arrest and indictment of four men for attempting to sell counterfeit U.S. $100 notes, Agence France-Presse reported.

The four South Korean nationals were arrested in Seoul last April with 1,400 counterfeit bills. U.S. authorities who examined the notes confirmed they were “supernotes” — high-quality $100 bills of the type allegedly forged in North Korea, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo daily reported.

The men reportedly purchased the currency from a broker in Shenyang, China near the North Korean border and have been indicted, according to an official handling the case at the National Police Agency.

“We have yet to find out where the U.S. bills were counterfeited,” the official said. Seoul has enlisted Beijing’s aid in attempting to determine their origin, the official added (Agence France-Presse/Gulf Times, Feb. 13).

China, meanwhile, is awaiting the results of a U.S. investigation of Macau-based Banco Delta Asia in North Korea’s alleged financial misconduct, South Korean ambassador to China Kim Ha-joong said yesterday.

“Macau is a Chinese territory, but the banking system is not designed to report everything to the mainland government. China is not able to take care of everything in detail. I think they are waiting for the investigation results to come from the United States,” said Kim.

Kim said Macanese authorities were also conducting their own investigation, with preliminary results already having been reported to the U.S. Treasury Department last month. He said Seoul expects an announcement on the issue from the department “in weeks.”

Kim also said he hopes Chinese President Hu Jintao’s scheduled visit to the United States in April could help to restart the stalled six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions (Park Song-wu, Korea Times, Feb. 14).