[USFK Forums] Seoul Worried Over NK Counterfeiting [Korea Times]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Monday, January 22, 2006

Seoul Worried Over NK Counterfeiting

The Korea Times, Sunday, January 22, 2006
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter

[PHOTO: Unloadable] Daniel Glaser, right, U.S. Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary who deals with terrorist financing and financial crimes, and other American officials arrive at Incheon International Airport, Saturday, for talks with South Korean officials on North Korea’s alleged counterfeiting of U.S. dollars.
/Yonhap

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Ban Ki-moon returned to Seoul on Sunday after a six-day visit to the United States, where he said Seoul had delivered its concerns to Pyongyang over the Communist state's alleged counterfeiting of U.S. dollars.

But he expressed hope that the on-going controversy over Pyongyang's money laundering and other illicit activities would not block the resumption of the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.

``We have conveyed our concerns to North Korean authorities,'' he said in an interview with CNN's Late Edition, which was aired on Sunday. ``At the same time, we hope that this kind of counterfeiting or illicit activities by North Korea will not stand in the way of six-party talks.''

Upon his arrival in Seoul, Ban said that South Korea will discuss with five other countries _ North Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan _ on ways to resume the denuclearization talks in February.

North Korea announced its boycott of the talks in November, arguing that Washington's imposition of the financial sanctions was an attempt to ``strangle'' the Pyongyang regime.

In a related development, a four-member delegation from the U.S. Treasury Department, which arrived in Seoul on Saturday, will meet Seoul officials on Monday to show evidence of Pyongyang's suspicious financial activities at a bank in Macau.

They refused to answer reporters' questions on their arrival in Seoul.

On Sept. 20, the U.S. Treasury Department said in the Federal Register, a daily newsletter of the U.S. government, that Banco Delta Asia in Macau provided financial services for over 20 years to multiple North Korean government agencies and front companies that have been engaged in illicit activities.

Such evidence allegedly led Washington to designate the bank as the ``primary money laundering concern.'' The bank consequently halted all financial services for North Korea.

Daniel Glaser, Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, and three other American officials visited Hong Kong and Macau before arriving in Seoul. They are scheduled to leave South Korea on Tuesday.

Even though Ban shared concerns with Washington over Pyongyang's financial illegalities, the foreign minister, who traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend the inaugural ``strategic consultation'' between South Korea and the U.S. on Thursday, expressed regret over Washington's labeling of Pyongyang as a ``criminal regime.''

``We are now talking in six-party talks, and South and North Koreans are engaged in very harmonious cooperation and exchanges,'' Ban said. ``When we are talking together, it would be desirable to regard the dialogue partner in a way not to provoke _ calling them a criminal regime, et cetera.''

Alexander Vershbow, U.S. ambassador to South Korea, called North Korea a ``criminal regime'' in December and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice labeled it a ``dangerous regime'' early this month.

During the strategic dialogue in the State Department, South Korea and the U.S. called for North Korea to return to talks with no conditions as China made a new initiative to break the impasse over the three-year-old nuclear crisis.

China hosted a surprise meeting between Christopher Hill, the U.S. chief delegate to talks, and his North Korean counterpart Kim Gye-gwan in Beijing on Wednesday to move forward the disarmament dialogue.

Hill, however, remained firm that the talks are unrelated to the ``legal enforcement issue.'' ``Hill reiterated in private what we have said in public about this issue, that they're separate and that we would hope the North Korean government would return without preconditions to the six-party talks,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters on Thursday.

The spokesman said the date to resume the talks was not yet decided, ``even though we continue to be hopeful that there will be one.''


im@koreatimes.co.kr

01-22-2006 17:16