23536
Bluelight Crew
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...rth-korea-got-itself-hooked-on-meth/?hpid=z12
A new study published in the journal North Korea Review says that parts of North Korea are experiencing a crystal meth “epidemic,” with an “upsurge” of recreational meth use and accompanying addiction in the country’s northern provinces.
“Almost every adult in that area [of North Korea] has experienced using ice and not just once,” a study co-author told the Wall Street Journal. “I estimate that at least 40% to 50% are seriously addicted to the drug.”
You might want to treat those sky-high numbers with some skepticism; it’s not clear how the authors could know this with such certainty or how so many North Koreans could get their hands on the drug when so many can’t afford or find basic medicine and when undernourishment remains a serious issue. A 2010 Brookings Institution report found that meth addiction rates were significant and growing but far from this scale. Still, the report is drawing attention to North Korea’s meth problem, which, whatever the scale, is well-documented and an apparently significant problem for the country.
So how do people in North Korea, a country where markets are so tightly regulated that even video CDs can be considered dangerous contraband and where social controls are often beyond Orwellian, manage to get hold of meth? It’s an interesting story, regardless of the scale of drug use today, and one that offers some interesting lessons for how North Korea works.
The problem actually goes back to the 1990s, when North Korea experienced a famine so devastating that virtually the entire world believed the country would collapse at any moment. But it didn’t, in part because Pyongyang finally decided to open up the world’s most closed economy just a small crack, by allowing a degree of black market trade across North Korea’s border with China. The idea was that the black market would bring in food, which it did, preventing North Korea’s implosion.
The black market trade into China has remained that little bit open ever since, either because Pyongyang authorities can’t close it now or because they see some trade as beneficial, probably both. Some provinces along the border have seen their economies liberalize a tiny, tiny bit — most notably North Hamgyung, which is named in the North Korea Review report as particularly blighted by meth addiction.
In the years after the border with China opened that little crack, two other things have happened that led to the current meth crisis. First, medicine ran out and the once-not-terrible health system collapsed — more on this later. Second, North Korea started manufacturing meth in big state-run labs. The country badly needs hard currency and has almost no legitimate international trade. But it was able to exploit the black market trade across the Chinese border by sending state-made meth into China and bringing back the money of Chinese addicts.
The story continues: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...rth-korea-got-itself-hooked-on-meth/?hpid=z12
A new study published in the journal North Korea Review says that parts of North Korea are experiencing a crystal meth “epidemic,” with an “upsurge” of recreational meth use and accompanying addiction in the country’s northern provinces.
“Almost every adult in that area [of North Korea] has experienced using ice and not just once,” a study co-author told the Wall Street Journal. “I estimate that at least 40% to 50% are seriously addicted to the drug.”
You might want to treat those sky-high numbers with some skepticism; it’s not clear how the authors could know this with such certainty or how so many North Koreans could get their hands on the drug when so many can’t afford or find basic medicine and when undernourishment remains a serious issue. A 2010 Brookings Institution report found that meth addiction rates were significant and growing but far from this scale. Still, the report is drawing attention to North Korea’s meth problem, which, whatever the scale, is well-documented and an apparently significant problem for the country.
So how do people in North Korea, a country where markets are so tightly regulated that even video CDs can be considered dangerous contraband and where social controls are often beyond Orwellian, manage to get hold of meth? It’s an interesting story, regardless of the scale of drug use today, and one that offers some interesting lessons for how North Korea works.
The problem actually goes back to the 1990s, when North Korea experienced a famine so devastating that virtually the entire world believed the country would collapse at any moment. But it didn’t, in part because Pyongyang finally decided to open up the world’s most closed economy just a small crack, by allowing a degree of black market trade across North Korea’s border with China. The idea was that the black market would bring in food, which it did, preventing North Korea’s implosion.
The black market trade into China has remained that little bit open ever since, either because Pyongyang authorities can’t close it now or because they see some trade as beneficial, probably both. Some provinces along the border have seen their economies liberalize a tiny, tiny bit — most notably North Hamgyung, which is named in the North Korea Review report as particularly blighted by meth addiction.
In the years after the border with China opened that little crack, two other things have happened that led to the current meth crisis. First, medicine ran out and the once-not-terrible health system collapsed — more on this later. Second, North Korea started manufacturing meth in big state-run labs. The country badly needs hard currency and has almost no legitimate international trade. But it was able to exploit the black market trade across the Chinese border by sending state-made meth into China and bringing back the money of Chinese addicts.
The story continues: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...rth-korea-got-itself-hooked-on-meth/?hpid=z12
