The Daily NK has an interesting article on a smuggler of South Korean dramas into North Korea. Despite the North Korean authorities’ strict control, foreign films and South Korean drama Video Compact Disks (VCDs) circulating around North Korea reportedly amount to over 1 million copies since 2000. Defector Choi Young Bum (pseudonym, 38), who has circulated [...]

From the AP: In dozens of interviews with Sri Lankan officials, Western diplomats and former rebels, The Associated Press found that the Tigers raise US$200 million (€139 million) to US$300 million (€208 million) a year, mostly through extortion and fraud. They then use front companies or middlemen to buy arms from legitimate weapons makers in [...]

The Associated Press has an article out today highlighting the difficulties facing the organized crime families in the Untied States. At the mob’s peak in the late 1950s, more than two dozen families operated nationwide. Disputes were settled by the Commission, a sort of gangland Supreme Court. Corporate change came in a spray of gunfire. This [...]

Jim Landers of The Dallas Morning News has a column on the bizarre situation concerning gas in Iraq and Iran.  Although both countries as located on oil fields, the ability to get gas to consumers in their own country has proven difficult due to the practice of subsidizing fuel prices. How a country rich in oil [...]

According to a report from the BBC, the Italian Mafia is generating a huge amount of money from its extortion rackets.  The Mafia has turned into one of Italy’s biggest business enterprises with a turnover of more than $120bn (£60bn) a year, a new report says. The report, prepared by Italy’s leading retailer’s association, warns of growing [...]

In the first nine months of this year, pirate attacks have increased 14 percent around the world, with a majority of attacks occurring of the coast of Somalia and Nigeria. Pirates in Somalia have targeted humanitarian aid. Pirates even targeted vessels on humanitarian missions, such as the MV Rozen which was hijacked in February soon after it [...]

Last week in Paris, four or five masked men entered a Harry Winston store and committed one of the largest jewelry thefts ever. A brazen and meticulously planned robbery of the Harry Winston store in central Paris last weekend netted the unknown thieves about €20 million, or $28.4 million, in gems, one of the largest jewelry [...]

According to Havocscope’s calculations, on the conservative side the illicit market in Burma generates around $470 million dollars a year. The breakdown is as follows: $350 Million in Illegal Logging. Timber from the Burma’s famed teak forests are cut down and smuggled and sold in China. $120 Million in Opium Production. The Opium industry is [...]

So how does North Korea Officials seize films that are banned in North Korea? Reuters mentions one method: One analyst said a routine tactic used by North Korean police is to cut the electricity to apartment blocs before a raid and then go to each home to check what is on video tapes or DVDs that have [...]

Another example of the interconnected nature of the black market.  In the United Kingdom, drug traffickers are teaming up with human traffickers to gain additional revenue. From The Times (UK): British criminals are forging links with East European gangsters to establish international networks for human trafficking, The Times has learnt. Investigators believe that the number of women and children [...]