North Korea claims arrest of 'foreign agents' for collecting fake data for U.S.

Yonhap News Agency (South Korea) ^ | April 20, 2006

[HAL9000]

SEOUL, April 20 (Yonhap) -- North Korea on Thursday accused the United States of planting and fabricating evidence of its alleged counterfeiting activities, citing the testimony of people it claimed were "foreign agents" working for Washington's Central Intelligence Agency and other "plot-breeding organizations."

In a statement carried by the country's Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday, an unidentified spokesman for the North's Security Ministry said the country has arrested a number of "foreign criminals" who were taking pictures of what it said was a nonexistent drug factory in a town near its northern border with China.

The statement did not provide further details on the foreign detainees, but said they testified to having been paid to take or fabricate photos and video that can be used against the North.

Rare videotapes of public executions in the communist state, allegedly made by North Korean defectors and human rights activists from other countries, were recently made public, but the North claimed such footage was staged.

"In order to make the source of the information sound plausible, they are mass-producing videotapes and CDs for the above-said purposes even by the use of animation processing technology on makeshift stages they have set up in the U.S. forces' bases in a third country and in South Korea," the statement said.

North Korea also claimed to have obtained "shocking information" that the U.S. intelligence agency planted fake evidence of the illicit activities it accuses the North of.

"The CIA secretly enlists experts on counterfeiting notes...and invites them to issue lots of fake currency from North Korean-style counterfeit note printing houses operating on U.S. military bases in different parts of the world," the spokesman said.

"Then they let these notes find their way to the DPRK and go out of it in the course of commercial transactions in a desperate bid to term it a producer of counterfeit notes," the statement said. DPRK stands for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Pyongyang has been boycotting international negotiations over its nuclear weapons program since November, two months after Washington imposed sanctions on a Macau bank suspected of circulating fake U.S. dollars printed in the North.

The United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia also participate in the nuclear disarmament talks.

Following a meeting with U.S. treasury officials last month in New York at which the North Korean delegation was reportedly provided with evidence of their country's counterfeiting activities, the North's chief delegate Ri Gun offered to punish individuals responsible for the illegal activity, while still denying the state's involvement.

Ministry of People's Security spokesman, however, said the country has the right to "strongly react to this vicious false propaganda launched by the hostile forces against it."

Pyongyang is threatening to stay away from the nuclear talks until Washington lifts the financial sanctions against it.

The latest dispute over North Korea's nuclear ambition erupted late 2002 when the U.S. accused the North of running a clandestine nuclear program to develop atomic weapons.

[Lurker]

Him so ronery...

L

[Nathan Zachary]

A guess the red cross and amnesty will be demanding to see these "prisoners" any day now to check on their well being, and if north korea refuses, all these leftists will be protesting..../s

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

Let's hope NK implodes rather than explodes