|
Japan¡¯s Sankei Shimbun reported Wednesday high-quality so-called Super X counterfeit US$100 bills were brought into Japan in March by a North Korean freighter. The notes are high-quality forgeries capable of fooling even electronic counterfeit detectors. Sophisticated notes nicknamed Super K circulated in Southeast Asia in the 1990s, but the Super X is much more accurate.
Japanese police said 10 of 7,100 US$100 bills brought in by the captain of North Korean freighter Lee Myong Su 7, which docked in Tottori Prefecture on March 23, were Super X counterfeits, according to the paper.
The skipper told police he was given the banknotes to pay off a Japanese businessman, and police believe he was unaware that some of the bills were fake but are investigating the relationship between North Korea and the forgeries, it said.
Japan earlier discovered 53 Super X notes, but this is the first instance where North Korea was involved.
¡±North Korea is known to have state-of-the-art technology to forge banknotes,¡± the daily said. ¡°Since the latter half of the 1990s, counterfeit bills have regularly been discovered when North Korean diplomats exchanged money in places in Asia such as Mongolia and Macao.¡±
(englishnews@chosun.com )
|
