Some more details on Mun Chol-myong, the North Korean spy extradited to the US earlier this week:
A North Korean spy who has been extradited to the U.S. was among other things North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's liquor runner. The portly leader has a well-known penchant for whiskey and cognac.
Mun Chol-myong (55), who was extradited from Malaysia last week, is allegedly a member of North Korea's spy agency and worked in Singapore and Malaysia for 10 years. He was arrested in Kuala Lumpur in 2019 after U.S. federal prosecutors indicted him on charges of money laundering to bypass sanctions against the regime.
According to an indictment, Mun purchased large quantities of liquor from three companies in Singapore to be sent to North Korea. In September 2016, he ordered 604 bottles of Remy Martin French cognac, Chivas Regal Scotch whiskey and Johnny Walker Black and Gold labels from one company and paid US$103,186.
The next month he bought another 571 bottles from the same company for $96,270.
In February 2018, Mun bought 400 bottles of whiskey and wine from another Singaporean company and paid $86,000.
That's a lot of money for top-level booze, in a country now going through its worst economic crisis since the mass starvations of the 1990s. But as I've said before, there's no way the suffering North Koreans will get to hear of how the Respected Comrade conducts himself in private – not since the South Korean government blocked those propaganda balloon flights.
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