North Korea feeding its workers Meth.

North Korean workers are being given a methamphetamine-based drug in the hope it will speed up a major construction project, according to reports.

Project managers in the city's capital of Pyongyang are said to be under so much pressure to finish the job on time that they have resorted to openly providing builders with the drug.

Nicknamed "ice," it is a form of the powerful stimulant methamphetamine, which is also known as crystal meth.

When snorted or inhaled, crystal meth gives users a sense of euphoria, increased energy levels and a suppressed appetite. The effects can last up to 12 hours.

Hundreds of thousands of North Korean citizens have been roped in to finish the project, which consists of a 70-floor skyscraper and more than 60 apartment blocks


It was approved earlier this year by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in defiance of tough sanctions placed on the hermit state over its nuclear weapons tests.

"Project managers are now openly providing drugs to construction

workers so that they will work faster," a construction source in Pyongyang told Radio Free Asia.

"[They] are undergoing terrible sufferings in their work."

Human rights workers in Asia said the working conditions amounted to slave labour and urged the UN to take further action against Kim Jong-un.


Phil Robertson, Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said: "It's going to be hard to verify that this is happening, but if it is confirmed then we utterly condemned it.

"The real issue here is slave labour, and our immediate reaction to this was that if they want faster workers why not actually pay them, instead of resorting to giving them drugs?

"The North Korean government wants to finish these buildings to somehow prove that they are a developed country. But this kind of forced labour has been unilaterally condemned by the international community."

Mr Robertson added: "It is a throwback to the Second World War when governments regularly resorted to forcing labour of their citizens."

North Korea has been producing methamphetamine to increase its funds since the 1970s.

It was was initially sold as a medicine, but quickly became a hugely popular drug.

It is produced in state-run facilities by underpaid chemists and sold both domestically and internationally.

As the production and sale of opium declined in the early 2000s, methamphetamine became even more widespread.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11692450


Well on the plus side at least those there who turn to Meth to drown their sorrows won't get shot for it...

Hundred's of thousands of people are building one skyscraper?

This story is clearly a load of crap.

Didn't we do that in ww2?

Mmmhmm, and do you have any evidence to refute it...?
No I didn't think so, pound sand sunshine

There are fairies living in my attic. As you have no evidence to refute it, it must be true.

Hundred's of thousands of people are building one skyscraper?

This story is clearly a load of crap.

The number of people involved in building it is probably untrue, but the likelihood the vast majority of them are using meth is not completely implausible.

North Korea's insane levels of meth use has been reported for about 5 years now; I watched a hidden cam video of a North Korean buying meth from one of their police officers on DailyNK a few years ago. It's widely available in the markets at very cheap prices.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/10/beef-crystal-meth-north-korea-officials

It's understandable that people living such a miserable existence would turn to a drug that gives them an escape.

It's also not new for governments to give methamphetamine to workers/soldiers to allow them to stay up for longer. Large numbers of soldiers in the Wehrmacht werre addicted to it (under the brand name Pervitin). The United States used to provide normal amphetamine to bomber pilots on long-range missions (like during the invasion of Iraq when the B-2s flew out of Whiteman AFB in Missouri all the way to Iraq, dropped their payload and flew back... around a 24 hour round-trip), though these days the US Air Force has progressed onto more advanced, less damaging stimulants like Modafinil.

That's all to say, I don't the premise of this article unbelievable at all when you take into account the history of governments using meth and North Korea's particular meth problem.

Hundred's of thousands of people are building one skyscraper?

This story is clearly a load of crap.

Didn't we do that during ww2?