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2 North Korea bites a golden
bullet By Donald Kirk
and developing new ones, he argued,
"We're creating jobs for people, in line with the
UN basic charter, in line with economic growth."
Barrett also believes North Korea may
somehow get around the sanctions by finding new
markets. "Why would you go to the trouble of going
to London?" he asked. "They're totally entitled to
sell their gold." The fact is, however, that
London remains the place to sell gold in
significant quantities on a regular basis.
Under the circumstances, Colin McAskill,
chairman of Hong Kong's Koryo Asia Ltd and the
guiding light of the Chosun
Development and Investment
Fund, dedicated to investing in North Korea,
accused top US Treasury officials of waging a
campaign to make sure the ban on banks dealing
with the BDA extends to gold and silver.
McAskill accused US officials, led by
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Stuart Levey,
under secretary for terrorism and financial
intelligence, of "using coercion, innuendo and
sheer force to intimidate banks from dealing with
North Korea".
Among the victims of the US
campaign is one of Koryo Asia's projects, the
Daedong Credit Bank, the only foreign bank based
in North Korea, set up primarily to deal with
accounts of foreign firms and embassies in
Pyongyang. The freeze of North Korean accounts in
the BDA, according to McAskill, includes about $7
million funds of Daedong Bank customers.
McAskill avidly supports North Korean
demands for the US to lift the ban on the BDA - a
move that would not only open up the frozen North
Korean accounts but would provide the opening
needed for Pyongyang to trade in a wide range of
products around the world.
The financial
issue is assumed to have ranked at the top of an
agenda discussed in meetings in Berlin between the
chief US envoy, Christopher Hill, and his North
Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan. Hill, reporting
on the Berlin talks in stop-offs in Seoul, in
Tokyo and Beijing, seemed hopeful about "progress"
in the next round of six-party talks on North
Korea's nuclear weapons, expected to open in
Beijing next month, after the failure of
negotiators to get anywhere in the last round
before Christmas.
South Korean media said
North Korea had agreed to shut down its
five-megawatt reactor at its nuclear complex
Yongbyon in return for the US promise of massive
aid, the crux of the 1994 Geneva Framework
Agreement that blew up in 2002 amid US charges of
a separate, secret North Korean program for
developing warheads from enriched uranium.
There was no assurance, however, that the
US is ready to relent on the BDA or that the UN
Security Council will consider lifting its own
sanction - enough to dissuade banks in London from
buying North Korean gold regardless of the US ban
on the BDA.
McAskill believes the
rationale for the crackdown on the BDA is flawed.
He questions the validity of the counterfeit
charge and, in any case, says most of the frozen
funds are not those of the North Korean
government, even though they're tired up in North
Korean accounts. "We want to get a breakthrough on
the six-party talks by getting the sanctions eased
or lifted entirely," he said. "We're at a very
delicate stage."
Whatever happens,
McAskill sees North Korea as ripe for investment,
with precious metals high on the list of potential
exports. "North Korea wants to move back into
legitimate business," he said. "They have a wealth
of minerals - gold, silver, zinc, magnesite,
copper, uranium, platinum - that needs investment
to extract."
Journalist Donald
Kirk has been covering Korea - and the
confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - for
more than 30 years. (Copyright 2007 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
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