Pinball [pachinko] bumper business for N. Korea, Japan fears
CARL FREIRE, Globe and Mail, 04/12/06, Associated Press
TOKYO — Gambling at pachinko was a lot more fun for Reiko Kuzuhara before she began to wonder whether maybe — just maybe — her losses were helping North Korea build nuclear weapons.
Pachinko, a form of pinball deeply loved in Japan, is an industry run by ethnic Koreans, and experts have long believed that the revenues are a vital source of hard currency for the North’s impoverished regime.
Now, as Kim Jong-il’s nuclear weapons program gathers pace, Japan’s attitude is hardening, and that includes shutting out the ferry on which money is believed to be hand-carried to North Korea.
"I really don’t like that the money I spend could be helping them with those sorts of things," said Ms. Kuzuhara, 55. "It’s making me think twice and cut back on how often I play."
Pachinko is an upright pinball game played at tens of thousands of brightly lit parlours across Japan. Success is measured in little steel payoff balls, which can be exchanged for cash or other prizes.
The machines rake in more than $200-billion (U.S.) a year, some of which finds its way to North Korea. Official figures put remittances from sources in Japan at $25.5-million, but the bookkeeping is murky and some think it’s closer to $850-million a year. No one knows how much is directly from pachinko.
"It’s very difficult to say how much cash is actually going from Japan to the North," said Toshio Miyatsuka, a North Korea specialist at Yamanashi Gakuin University in central Japan who has written a book about the pachinko industry. "But it does seem certain that a lot of it is winding up in the hands of the North Korean government and military, and that includes money earned from drugs and pachinko."
Japanese government records show that of $25.5-million (U.S.) reported to have been sent from Japan to North Korea during the 2005 fiscal year, more than 90 per cent was hand-delivered.
The banning of the Mangyongbong ferry from Japanese ports in July has almost certainly put a crimp in the cash flow. But government officials say it’s hard to track money delivered through third countries, in person or through bank accounts.
Officials in the pachinko industry say North Korea’s image problems and the sanctions have not been a business issue.
"We’re not hearing about anyone losing business because of the missiles or the nuclear test," said Takaaki Sasaki, spokesman for Zennichiyuren, an industry organization.
Still, the connection makes some Japanese players uneasy. "I used to play frequently, but I don’t go so often any more," Ms. Kuzuhara said. "I really don’t want North Korea using my money for bombs."
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