Secret calls and code names: The risky business of sending money to N Korea - BBC News

Money transfers are vital to North Koreans but carry huge risks, and now the South is cracking down too.

14 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Jungmin Choi / BBC KoreanImage caption, Broker Hwang Ji-sung defected to the South in 2009By Jungmin ChoiBBC KoreanEvery year, hundreds of North Korean defectors, who have since settled in the South, send much-needed money back home. But this is getting riskier as both countries are increasingly cracking down on illegal transfers of money.

"It is like a spy movie and people are putting their lives on the line," says Hwang Ji-sung, who has been a broker in South Korea for more than a decade.

As a defector himself, he knows how complex and difficult the task is - requiring a covert network of brokers and couriers spread across South Korea, China and North Korea.

Secret calls using smuggled Chinese phones are made at remote locations. Code names are used.

The stakes are incredibly high - if caught, North Koreans risk being sent to the country's dreaded political prison camps, known as kwan-li-so, where hundreds of thousands are believed to have died over the years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-68065475?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

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