Norks give new meaning to "fake but accurate"

Washington Times:

Kim Il-nam's first encounter with counterfeit U.S. currency was embarrassing. On an overseas trip several years ago, the North Korean diplomat took a $100 bill from a wad of more than $7,000 he had received from the Trade Bank in Pyongyang to the front desk of his hotel.
"I had to buy some toiletries, so I asked the cashier at the hotel front desk to change one of the new bills," said Mr. Kim, who uses a pseudonym to protect his identity since defecting. "She took my note away and returned, saying, 'Sir, this is fake.' I felt like a criminal and protested to the Trade Bank when I got back to Pyongyang."
Things are different now. A new generation of fake "supernotes," far harder to detect, has appeared, counterfeiting experts say.
Feeling the latest $100 bill from North Korea, Yoshihide Matsumura, whose Matsumura Technology Co. supplies counterfeit-detection machinery to Japan's post offices, banks and law- enforcement agencies, said: "This is the closest to perfect counterfeit U.S. money ever made."
Counterfeit dollars are one of the issues that have complicated the six-party talks over North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Before Kim Jong-il's government admits United Nations inspectors, it is demanding release of $25 million in frozen accounts at a Macao bank the U.S. accuses of laundering counterfeit dollars. North Korea denies making or trafficking in counterfeits.
In separate interviews, Mr. Kim and Mr. Matsumura, 57, identified a printing factory in Pyongsong, on the outskirts of Pyongyang, as the location of presses that print counterfeit currency.
Mr. Matsumura, whose Tokyo-based company started in the counterfeit-detection business around the time of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, said North Korea's early efforts were often seized in quantity from diplomats and trade officials.
Now that the United States, Japan and other countries have intensified their checks, "the North Koreans are more careful," he said. The greater scrutiny has restricted the spread of the fake bills in developed countries. The U.S. government has only seized about $50 million of the fake notes since they were detected in the Philippines in 1989, Michael Merritt, an official in the Secret Service, told a Senate committee last year.
The fakes still circulate in quantity in less-developed countries, Mr. Matsumura said. The U.S. Treasury Department has warned banks in Vietnam, Malaysia, Mongolia and elsewhere that they are holding accounts traceable to North Korea that may be used for money laundering.
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Enemies used to use fake currency to devalue the money of their adversaries, but in North Korea's case it is to raise money for their illegal enterprises. It is a regime that could not withstand a RICO suit. I suspect that even with their latest nuke deal they will still continue to produce more "fake but accurate" stuff than Dan Rather.