The Root of All Evil: Money, Rice, Crime & Law in North Korea

This report outlines a comprehensive, multilateral long-term legal strategy to confront the North Korean regime's kleptocracy by leveraging existing UN resolutions, international conventions, and U.S. statutes. It proposes the identification, freezing, forfeiture, and placement of illicitly obtained regime funds into an international escrow system. These funds would be disbursed on a limited, conditional basis to provide humanitarian aid—such as food and medical care—to impoverished North Koreans, and eventually, to support infrastructure rehabilitation, contingent upon measurable progress by Pyongyang toward disarmament, transparency, and human rights reforms. The report emphasizes that North Korea’s greatest crime against its people may be its misappropriation of national wealth, derived largely through the exploitation of forced labor and resource extraction. Historically, the regime has shown willingness to negotiate only under financial duress. By forming a financial enforcement coalition outside the UN framework—given the obstructionist roles of China and Russia—the U.S. and its partners could target trading networks that fund repression and WMD proliferation. Such a coalition could undermine the regime’s capacity for internal control, support market-driven change, and incentivize genuine reform through carefully monitored disbursements of escrowed assets.