Tweet of the Day: North Korea Calls Restaurant Defections “Unprecedented Kidnapping”

@Guitard, if North Korean diplomats for example are making meth deals in the same country where these restaurants are located this would allow this illicit money to be changed into clean restaurant sales money. Than whatever banking mechanism they are using to move restaurant profits than could be used to move the illicit money into the Kim regime’s coffers.

It has been speculated before that these restaurants are run by Bureau 39 the lead money launders for the Kim regime:

The working assumption, according to most reports, is that the Pyongyang chain is primarily there to make money, to feed the North Korean leadership’s desperate need for foreign currency.

Some speculate that the restaurants are in fact directly under the wing of the secretive Bureau 39, an agency that allegedly launders cash for the government through ventures that include arms sales and methamphetamine production. [BBC]

Here is another article explaining what the restaurants are for:

According to North Korean expert and author Bertil Lintner the restaurants have several financial benefits for the regime: “The North Korean government runs those restaurants to a) raise foreign exchange for the government in Pyongyang, b) to finance the activities of the North Korean embassy in the country where a restaurant is located, and c) to launder money from other activities,” he says, adding that restaurants are “perfect vehicles” for money-laundering. [The Guardian]