Pachinko in Japan

are surprisingly owned mostly by North Korean. A good source of income no doubt, perhaps the entire military budget.

Another badly-kept kept secret is that the North Korean economy relies on pachinko. In 1994, Japanese police testified in court that about 30% of the pachinko industry was controlled by North Koreans. If this is true, it would account for a massive amount of the $600 million sent to the Communist state from Japan each year. read on

It is an open secret in Japan that pachinko is one of the pillars upon which North Korea's economy rests. Police and economists estimate that up to 30 percent of the pachinko industry is controlled by North Koreans living in Japan, many of whom fun nel a portion of their profits across the Japan Sea to their homeland.

While pinball parlors might seem an unlikely underpinning for a national economy, even one as shaky as North Korea's, consider the numbers: Japan's 18,000 pachinko parlors ring up annual sales of $280 billion.

No one knows exactly how much profit there is in the shady, mob-connected world of pachinko, or how much of the game's proceeds wind up in North Korea. In 1994, Japanese police testified in parliament that $600 million or more was being sent to the world's last Stalinist state, much of it derived from pachinko. Japanese media and economists also have placed the number in that range, though some say it may have fallen by more than 80 percent. read on

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