NORTH KOREA TAKES PROMISING FIRST STEPS TOWARD JOINING THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

From USA Today:

The South Korean president signed a commitment with North Korea Thursday to seek a formal end to the Korean War, ending a historic three-day summit during which he was snubbed by his host and upstaged by a nuclear agreement 600 miles away in Beijing.

South Korea never signed the cease fire that ended hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War; so the two Koreas have remained technically at war ever since. In their declaration Thursday in the northern capital Pyongyang, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il agreed to pursue a permanent peace. South Korea has said it will need to work with the other combatants in the Korean war — China and the United States — to reach a formal peace deal. President Bush has said there can be no permanent peace on the Korean peninsula until North Korea gives up nuclear arms.

In their 8-point agreement Thursday, the wealthy South and destitute North also promised to expand economic cooperation, open regular freight service along a recently restored rail link and create a joint fishing zone on their disputed sea frontier.

But the lofty pronouncements in Pyongyang were overshadowed by a nuclear deal late Wednesday in Beijing: In talks with five other countries, North Korea agreed to complete the disabling of its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and reveal all its nuclear programs by the end of the year.

In return, the isolated Stalinist state will get the equivalent of one million tons of heavy fuel oil in energy, economic and humanitarian assistance, and the United States will work toward establishing normal diplomatic relations with North Korea and taking it off a blacklist of countries that sponsor terrorism.

NORTH KOREA ISSUING COUNTERFEIT U.S. CURRENCY

Bloomberg is reporting today that one of the problems holding up the six-party talks over North Korea's nuclear weapons program is the accusation that the North Korean government is printing counterfeit U.S. $100 bills. The United States has known of the fake $100 bills which are often called "supernotes" since 1989 and has confiscated approximately $50 million of the counterfeit bills. A Korean newspaper/website doing research on a story about the supernotes was able to obtain one, which is pictured below. The bills can be purchased for $70 each and are very difficult to detect. The United States has frozen North Korean assets held in at least one bank due to concerns that the bank is helping to launder money for the North Korean government. Many have speculated since 1989 that the United States will issue new and different $100 bills and might require that all old $100 bills be exchanged and destroyed, rendering the counterfeits worthless.

Daily NK