From: Urban Ghosts
Room 39, purportedly founded by Kim Il-sung sometime in the 1970s, is known officially as Central Committee Bureau 39 of the Korean Workers Party. But like so much in North Korea, we know very little about the secretive office; just enough, perhaps, to be completely unsettled by the very thought of it.
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But over time, large-scale multi-agency operations have led the United States and its allies to determine that Room 39 could be the nerve centre of a vast criminal enterprise – from counterfeit cigarettes and supernotes to the manufacturing of narcotics – designed to funnel billions of dollars into the crippled North Korean economy.
