Wildlife smuggling

North Korea said to be revitalising African wildlife trafficking

When Mozambican police detained a suspected North Korean spy and taekwondo master along with Pyongyang’s political attaché to South Africa, they found $100,000 in cash and 4.5kg of rhino horn stashed in the diplomats’ Toyota. After Pyongyang’s ambassador to Pretoria intervened, the two were quietly released and later allowed to return to North Korea at the end of last year. The 2015 arrest, recounted in a report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime and corroborated by the Financial Times, is part of what researchers say is a revitalised web of North Korean state-sanctioned criminal activity focused on rhino horn, ivory and minerals in Africa. The report by the non-governmental agency, released on Friday, said Pyongyang’s “smuggling networks, front companies and state-sponsored criminal actors are sophisticated, efficient and adept at circumventing sanctions, laws and regulations”.