North Korea Pours UN Money Into Food Program

That would actually be elegant and expensive food for Kim Jong-il and friends, not for the people of North Korea. You know, the ones referred to in the title Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Nope, not them.

Oh, and the rest goes to weapons, etc.

U.S.: N. Korea misused UN cash

WASHINGTON -- A senior State Department official told members of Congress in a recent classified briefing that funds transferred to the North Korean government by the United Nations Development Program were used by the Kim Jong Il regime to pay enterprises involved in weapons sales, as well as to purchase buildings in Europe and technology that could be used in a nuclear weapons program.

And because UN money is not enough,

The memo, which the State Department says is based on eyewitness accounts from program officials and internal UNDP business records, also alleges that the program's local employees withdrew from the UNDP's account at Pyongyang's Foreign Trade Bank tens of thousands of dollars worth of what UNDP officials identified as counterfeit U.S. currency.

Of course one should ask, what is the United Nations Development Program doing holding couterfeit U.S. money?

It is instructive to note that this is not shocking to anyone anymore, and that we just let it go on and on.

"It is disturbing but it should not be surprising," said Mike Green, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council until the end of 2005. "Cash transfers to the North Korean regime are tightly controlled at the top to ensure Kim can procure dual-use materials for his weapons programs, finance his operations abroad and provide luxury goods for the elite. This is all fungible money."

How I wish we had a government that would not roll over for monsters.