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| 김정일 “미 금융제재로 북 정권 붕괴 위험” (Newsweek)[미래한국신문] |
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다음은 헌법을 생각하는 변호사 모임의 홈페이지 http://www.law717.org 의 국내보도자료편에 있는 것임. -------------------------------------------------------- 다음은 미래한국신문 http://www.futurekorea.co.kr 에 있는 기사임. 이 기사와 관련이 있는 Newsweek 의 영문 기사는 이 기사 뒤에 올릴 것임. 김정일 “미 금융제재로 북 정권 붕괴 위험” 미 시사주간지 뉴스위크 최신호 보도 미국이 전 세계에 퍼진 김정일 정권의 자금줄을 차단하기위해 실질적인 압박을 가하는 북한 ‘돈줄 죄기 정책’(Pocketbook Pollicing)을 새로운 전략으로 채택한 것으로 나타났다. 미국의 시사주간지 뉴스위크는 최신호(3일자)에서 미 행정부가 지난 2001년 말부터 북한의 불법 활동 대응방안 마련에 나섰으며, 중앙정보국(CIA), 연방수사국(FBI), 재무부 등 관계기관들이 3년에 걸쳐 북한의 마약, 위폐, 가짜 담배, 미사일 기술 수출 등에 이르는 광범위한 밀매 활동 단속대책을 짰다고 보도했다. 뉴스위크는 관계 기관들이 2001년 북한 경제에 대한 철저한 분석을 통해 북한이 5억 달러에 이르는 자금을 광범위한 범죄관련 거래를 통해 조달하고 있다는 결론을 내리고 금융제재 수단을 강구했다고 전했다. 뉴스위크는 이어 미국 관리와 전문가들의 말을 인용, 이 같은 (북한 금융거래를 겨냥한) ‘표적 제재’(targeted sanction)가 대단히 효과적이며, 특히 북한 지도부에게 큰 영향을 미치고 있다고 전했다. 실제로 피터 벡(Peter Beck) ‘국제위기그룹’(ICG) 연구원은 뉴스위크와의 인터뷰에서 미국의 대북 전략이 “북한 고위층들에게 큰 영향을 준 것으로 보인다”고 밝혔다. 대북 금융제재 실시 후 북한을 방문한 바 있는 벡 연구원은 금융제재가 북한 정권을 압박하는 효과적인 수단이라는 미국 정부의 의견을 뒷받침하듯 “북한의 변화를 쉽게 느낄 수 있었다”고 전했다. 뉴스위크가 입수한 미 정부 문서에 따르면 김정일 북한 국방위원장은 1월 중국 방문 때 후진타오 중국 국가주석에게 “미국의 금융거래 단속 때문에 정권이 붕괴할 수도 있다”고 불만을 터뜨릴 정도였다고 한다. 또 미국이 BDA(마카오 소재 뱅코델타아시아) 은행이 북한의 불법금융자금을 세탁해 주고 있다고 발표하자 일주일 만에 예금의 40%가 인출되는 상황이 발생했으며, 이후 은행은 북한과의 거래를 중단했다며 북한에 대한 금융제재의 위력을 소개했다. 스튜어트 레비 미 재무부 차관은 “BDA에 대한 조치 이후 세계 각국 은행들은 미국의 보복을 우려해 북한과의 거래를 속속 중단했으며, 앞으로도 미국의 이 같은 캠페인은 ‘눈 덩이 같은 효과’를 낼 것”이라고 평가했다. 뉴스위크는 “방코델타아시아의 50여 동결계좌 가운데는 북한 고위급으로 추정되는 인사의 계좌 9개가 포함됐다”는 미국 관리들의 증언을 인용, 이 계좌들이 김정일과 직계그룹의 개인사업에 활용되는 것으로 믿을 만한 상당한 이유가 있다”고 보도했다. (출처: 프리존뉴스) 김필재 기자 (spooner1@freezonenews.com) 미래한국 2006-04-05 오전 12:26:00 ------------------------------------------------------------ Washington has finally found a strategy ( Newsweek) 다음은 위의 기사와 간련이 있는 Newsweek http://msnbc.msn.com 에 있는 기사 임. MSNBC.com Pocketbook Policing Washington has finally found a strategy that is putting real pressure on the regime—going after its sources of cash, all across the world. By Christian Caryl Newsweek International Updated: 3:20 a.m. ET April 2, 2006 April 10-17, 2006 issue - Swiss businessman and Asian-art collector Jakob Steiger never figured in headlines before last month. But his low profile ended with a bang when the U.S. Treasury announced that it was imposing sanctions against his firm, Kohas AG, for acting as a "technology broker" for the North Korean military. The Bush administration claims that the company, based in the university town of Fribourg, is half-owned by a North Korean firm that was named on a previous U.S. blacklist of entities suspected of involvement in "the proliferation of goods with weapons-related applications." On its own the action against Kohas might seem like a sideshow in the much larger U.S. effort to eliminate Kim Jong Il's nuclear-weapons program. But in fact, the move is just the latest twist in an intense American offensive against North Korea—one that experts believe is finally beginning to squeeze the regime. Numerous U.S. government agencies, including the FBI, Treasury, State Department and CIA, have been working for three years to curtail Pyongyang's vast network of black-market activities—from the sale of missile technology to heroin trafficking to the manufacture of fake cigarettes and bogus Viagra—and to cut off the financial conduits by which the proceeds are laundered. David Asher, who ran the Bush administration's interagency effort, says that criminal North Korean businesses were targeted as part of "the largest undercover investigation against Asian organized crime in a decade." Washington has raised the possibility of sanctions against financial institutions that deal with Pyongyang, and has arrested or indicted dozens of figures linked to Chinese triads and the Irish Republican Army, among other groups. Whether this effort to squeeze Kim will persuade him to abandon his nuclear arsenal remains to be seen. But Washington officials believe that this campaign of "targeted sanctions" is proving very effective. "From what we've seen, this has been affecting the North Korean elite in particular," says Peter Beck, a Seoul-based analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG). Indeed, according to an unclassified U.S. government document obtained by NEWSWEEK, during Kim Jong Il's January trip to China, he reportedly told Chinese President Hu Jintao that "his regime might collapse under the weight of the U.S. crackdown on his financial dealings." If nothing else, the latest U.S. actions have given Washington a powerful card to play in the negotiations with Pyongyang, known as the Six-Party Talks. In recent years North Korea's two neighbors, China and South Korea, have held most of the leverage in the on-again, off-again negotiations. They insist on engaging the Pyongyang regime (meaning, primarily, propping it up with political favors, aid and investment) rather than confronting it. But the engagement policy has had mixed results, at best. The U.S. decision to ratchet up the pressure on North Korea's illicit activities was taken shortly after George W. Bush was first elected. Asher, a former banker and State Department official, started leading what became known as the North Korea Illicit Activities Initiative in late 2001, and it immediately conducted a study of the North Korean economy. Investigators found that the country's official revenues couldn't cover a "black hole" of about $500 million—equivalent to half the country's annual exports. Pyongyang was plugging that shortfall in its balance sheet, the experts concluded, through a broad network of criminal business dealings. In particular, Washington confirmed what had long been suspected in many quarters: Pyongyang was printing and distributing large quantities of high-quality counterfeit U.S. $100 bills, known as supernotes, which are almost impossible to detect without sophisticated equipment. Sources say that the number of fake supernotes in circulation has spiked in recent years. Many have been found in South Korea, China and Taiwan. In August 2005, customs officials in Kaohsiung, Taiwan's southern port city, searched a shipping container of goods in transit from mainland China to Los Angeles. They discovered $2 million in fake greenbacks hidden in seven suitcase-size cardboard boxes. The Taiwanese officials were acting on a tip from the FBI. Altogether, Treasury officials say, the U.S. campaign has confiscated some $48 million in fake $100 bills around the world over the past four years. But the Americans didn't stop there. On Sept. 15 the Treasury Department issued a blandly worded announcement designating a bank in the Chinese gambling haven of Macau as a "primary money laundering concern" for North Korea. Strictly speaking, the measure didn't amount to sanctions—merely a warning that the bank in question, known as Banco Delta Asia SARL (BDA), was under suspicion. U.S. banks can still do business with BDA, but the threat that they might yet be ordered to cut off dealings with the Macau bank has made them wary. In today's interconnected financial world, an official U.S. move to blacklist a foreign bank would be the kiss of death, since any financial institution doing business in dollars needs to hold accounts in correspondent U.S. banks in order to complete transactions. Nervous depositors immediately staged a run on BDA, withdrawing nearly 40 percent of its deposits within a week. In a desperate attempt to salvage its reputation, BDA announced it was cutting all ties with Pyongyang and froze nearly 50 accounts linked with North Korean companies and institutions—including nine belonging to presumably high-ranking members of the Pyongyang government. A U.S. official tells NEWSWEEK that at least some of the names on the frozen accounts, both corporate and individual, were not the real names of the assets' owners. The official says there was some reason to believe that those nine accounts handled personal business for Kim Jong Il or members of his immediate circle. (How much money was in the accounts has not been disclosed.) In a recent statement, BDA said that it "will not resume relationships with North Korean or related entities going forward. The bank is implementing new, enhanced anti-money-laundering procedures." The BDA move clearly stung Pyongyang. Within weeks after BDA froze the accounts, North Korean emissaries began arriving in Macau, demanding that the money in the accounts be released. Macau authorities expelled them. Then, in February, a North Korean spokesman complained that the United States had effectively banned the North "from having normal financial transactions such as remittance of dollars to banks and settlement by credit cards." (Not many ordinary North Koreans, needless to say, use plastic money.) Following the BDA action, other banks around the world have begun to cut ties with North Korea for fear that the United States might retaliate. U.S. Treasury Department Under Secretary Stuart Levy says the targeted sanctions, or threat of sanctions, has put "huge pressure" on the Pyongyang regime. He predicts that as more business people and governments learn about the risks of dealing with North Korea, the U.S. campaign will have a "snowballing ... avalanche effect." In another measure of the campaign's effectiveness, Pyongyang soon declared that lifting the sanctions would be the precondition for resuming the stalled Six-Party Talks. The ICG's Beck visited Pyongyang not long after the original sanctions were imposed, and says that he immediately noticed a change. "Our minder complained about the financial clampdown more than anything else. He mentioned it several times over several days." Adds Ahn Ye Hong, a North Korea expert at the Bank of Korea in Seoul: "Usually the North Koreans don't admit problems, even if they're starving." Pyongyang is trying to wriggle its way out of the crisis. In recent weeks the regime has claimed that it, too, has been a "victim" of counterfeiting, and promised to punish any North Korean citizens shown to have been involved. Citing an anonymous government intelligence source, Seoul's Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported recently that Kim Jong Il ordered the execution of anyone manufacturing counterfeit money. In response, the U.S. ambassador to Seoul, Alexander Vershbow, coolly suggested that Washington might be willing to talk if the North Koreans hand over the plates from their illicit supernote printing plant. Some experts say that the real target of America's new financial crackdown isn't Pyongyang but Beijing, which is Kim Jong Il's most important patron. The American sanctions campaign puts the Chinese "in a very delicate situation," says Lee Dong Bok, a former South Korean intelligence official who is active in a human-rights group called the North Korea Democratization Forum. In February the U.S. targeted a small Hong Kong subsidiary of the Bank of China, for holding what was said to be up to $2.7 million in fake U.S. currency, presumably from North Korea. (A Bank of China spokeswoman in Hong Kong said: "We have no knowledge of any investigation. We've always attached great importance to anti-money-laundering policies.") What's more, U.S. investigators have suspicions that Macau casinos have been used for money laundering in general, and money laundering by North Korea in particular. China's thriving trade with America would be impossible without good relations with the U.S. financial system. Beijing is desperately trying to build credibility for its shaky banking sector, and therefore wants to avoid the taint of dirty dealings with Pyongyang. Indeed, the Bank of China, for example, is planning an initial public offering later this month, likely to be partially underwritten by U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs. "This is really about the Bank of China," says one Western financial expert in Tokyo. And the Americans show no sign of letting up. "You can't negotiate on crime," says Levy of the Treasury Department, adding: "We're just starting." Japan, where Pyongyang reaps an estimated $300 million a year from illicit activities, is starting a crackdown of its own. One Japanese court has eliminated a tax exemption once granted to Pyongyang-related organizations. And financial regulators have been subjecting money transfers to the North to closer scrutiny. But like the Chinese, the Japanese are worried that pushing too hard could result in North Korea's collapse, with all sorts of undesirable knock-on effects for the region. For their part, the Americans say they're just trying to get North Korea back to the negotiating table, and that the sanctions are a way of pressuring them to give up their nukes, rather than to foment regime change. Finding the right balance will be tricky—but in the meantime, Pyongyang will continue to feel the pinch. With Mark Hosenball in Washington, George Wehrfritz in Taipei, B.J. Lee in Seoul, and Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo © 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
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ㅁㅁㅁㅁ 2006-04-06 15:00:11좋아요 한 회원내가 볼뗀 뻔한 수순인거 같다 장성택! 그자다,....우선 중국의 지원을 입아 세력 확대는 긑나가고 개정일 축출만이 남았다 우선 개정일이는 숙청하고 장성택이가 협상테이블에 앉는다면 많을걸 얻는다 장성택은 그렇게 권력을 다질거 같다,..
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