We know they do it, the so-called “super notes” that are basically indistinguishable from the real thing except for individual serial number comparisons. The treasury says basically that there is no real way to stop “state sponsored” counterfeiting except by diplomacy. Which is not going well.
Since they can thus balance their budget with fake money, we are arming them.
Presumably we could respond in kind and destroy their own currency.
Or we could simply threaten to do so unless they cut it out.
But would doing so have major side effects, lik wiping out world trust in all currencies? And would that be a bad thing, returning the world to the gold standard?
We need to develop a cargo-carrying drone aircraft. One that is damn cheap. Cheaper than an air-to-air missile, if possible.
Load it with propaganda materials, & giveaway first aids kits, & seed packets & stuff.
Light, cheap stuff that is badly needed by Joe Average in NK.
Cover the stuff with news about the outside World.
Send the drones over to drop the stuff on North Korean cities, towns, villages & military bases.
That will get Krazy Kim’s attention.
Thing is, North Korea’s currency can’t be traded for anything. It’s essentially company scrip. It is not traded on the world market, because no one wants the stuff. So it is only used internally. And North Korea is the most tightly regimented society on earth, one that has almost literally taken George Orwell’s 1984 as a blueprint for how to run a society.
So printing North Korean notes is useless. No foreigner can buy things from North Korea with the notes. And North Koreans themselves are watched pretty closely. A peasant family that showed up with a wheelbarrow full of notes isn’t going to be able to buy anything with it, they’ll be picked up by the cops and interrogated. Leaving aside the problem that there’s nothing those peasants could buy anyway. North Korea has a command and control economy, not a market economy.
As Lemur866 notes, there’s little we could do in kind since their script is worthless, so let’s look at it another way. Maybe if instead of putting our president’s faces on our bills, we could change it to depictions of Kim Il Sung engaged in sexual congress with various farm animals or the like that he’d be loathe to mass reproduce. Conceivably, he would then cease and desist from further criminal conduct in this specific regard.
Edit timed out… Kim Jong Il.
What makes you think the propaganda and news about the outside world will be believed by the average North Korean, given how isolated they have been for so many years?
Kim could just forbid the use of the first aid kits and seed packets and booby trap a bunch of them just to put the Fear of [del]God[/del] Kim in people that were considering using them anyway.
Also, I don’t think it’s possible for us to damage the NK economy. How can you damage something that doesn’t exist in the first place?
Doesn’t matter.
The possibility of belief alone is a threat.
I thoroughly agree - but I would make sure that the propaganda is 100% truthful.
I often wonder how much effect West German TV had on the DDR.
This is how young I am: DDR=Dance Dance Revolution.
Which is something else North Korea could use.
Either picture would work.
If we know a sovereign nation is doing it, why aren’t we considering it an act of war? Isn’t that a blatent attack on our financial system?
“Act of war” is not a term to throw around lightly. If the US govt declared this to be an act of war, how would you propose we respond? Do you really think that going to war over it would be prudent and/or helpful in any way? Assuming you agree that the answer is no, calling something an act of war without being prepared to go to war is a sure way to establish a reputation as a paper tiger.
How does that make it an act of war?
I’m not sure I care. Let 'em.
But I think lieu is onto something here with the idea of changing our currency to something Kim wouldn’t want to print.
Not things that insult his father; although I found that proposal funny, it would provoke war. But a redesign that expresses our values as opposed to the divine right of kings & despotism.
Not for nothing did this country used to put Liberty personified on the money.
I propose that the $100 bill be redesigned, & the old ones carefully removed from circulation & their numbers recorded. Heck, I would volunteer to do the recording for a modest stipend (wait, that sounded larcenous; I didn’t mean it that way).
The new bills should show, instead of a single national hero, images, front & back, of democratic institutions acting democratically. Washington ceding control back to Congress, say.
Subtle, true, but powerful.
And it would be good for us, too.