From the AP: Agency: North Korea Not Counterfeiting

South Korea’s spy agency said Thursday that North Korea was not currently producing counterfeit currency, apparently contradicting U.S. allegations that have become the latest obstacle in nuclear disarmament talks with the communist country… Asked whether the North is currently printing counterfeit money, the agency said: “It’s not the case…”

From VOA:

President Bush and other senior U.S. officials say Pyongyang is still actively engaged in counterfeiting. . . U.S. Treasury Department officials last week visited several Asian cities, including Seoul, to show authorities evidence of alleged recent illegal activities by North Korea, including counterfeiting.

After an initial search I have not been able to pull up any news reports that deal with the dates North Korea’s counterfeiting operation was producing, any indication that it is not currently doing so, or any mention of the dates on the counterfeits recovered.

However, it would be extremely difficult for South Korean intelligence services to prove that North Korea has not been actively counterfeiting since 1998; how do they know when the North stopped counterfeiting? For the sake of argument let’s assume that none of the supernotes found have dates past 1998. The problem is that those notes could have been printed last week.

Or assume that multiple defectors yielded what is to be considered reliable and corroborating intelligence that counterfeiting at the No. 62 factory (where North Korea has a press of the same type used by the U.S. Mint) has ceased – let’s even assume that those defectors are telling the truth as they know it. Again, the operation could have moved elsewhere without the knowledge of those defectors, or could have resumed at that location since the defectors left, or both, or even something else.

For now we can’t know more with what has been publicly released. Well NIS, what do you have?