North Korea has been accused by the U.S for about 20 years of making best counterfeit money in the world. But these counterfeit activities have been declined a lot since 2008, and that is mainly because the country has gotten so good at producing non-traceable counterfeit money, it has become too good to be detected.
Elena Quercioli, assistant professor at the University of Texas, said: “the Supernote is a very deceptive counterfeit and is very rare to find.” She also says that with the increasing skills of United States to find such notes, their production skills have also increased a great deal.
She also said that this cat and mouse race is mainly between the authorities and criminals. She further said that North Korea is the main source of producing $100 counterfeit bills to the world and with the increased production of these bills, the response of UN sanction may also be increased.
The strain on North Korea is really big if we consider economics, she continued saying that it is obvious that they are involved in such activities. However, there is no such proof. Public affairs specialist of U.S secret services Julia McMurray said only less than one percent of the total counterfeit money received in 2017 has been from North Korea; she further said that these notes have been filtering out of the U.S economy gradually.
Any counterfeit bill comes with its consequences, but the U.S law abides the citizens to give such bills to the secret services. Quercioli said that Supernotes are a diplomatic issue for global commercial banking and with developing sanctions on North Korea it may be under pressure to produce supernotes, but there is no way to be sure that it may have stopped producing the supernotes.
Although the supernotes are being excluded from the economy, it still affects the way U.S payments operate. With the supernotes as big as 100 dollar bills, they surely affect the payments in the US.
The United States, such high scale counterfeiting of currency is a threat to the U.S national interests and even a bigger threat to the U.S economy. Any supernotes, whether or not by North Korea have a direct power to undermine the confidence of people in the U.S currency. U.S economy can come at risk if the counterfeiting is done a little more extensively. The U.S law also becomes a subject of question and violation of its laws at such a big scale can put forward a direct attack on U.S economy.
Some suspect that North Korea may ramp up money counterfeiting which will affect the large-scale U.S payments because the 100 dollar bills which are the main notes for counterfeiting are used for large-scale payments. Money counterfeiting at such a huge level may interfere with the U.S economy. We are still hopeful that secret services get a hold of this situation and supernotes can be wiped from the economy.
