Originally published at: How North Korea perfected counterfeiting $100 bills | Boing Boing
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Obligatory.
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The monkey playing with stacks of cash really upped the production quality.
This was fifteen years ago. https://www.vice.com/en/article/vb8pk9/north-koreas-counterfeit-benjamins-have-vanished
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One thing that I never really noticed before is that in the last revision of the $100 bill, they switched sides of Independence Hall that they display. On the older $100 bills in the video (pre-2013) it shows the south side. But on current versions of the bill, it shows the north side.
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Rolling Stone did an interesting article about the american counterfeiter who defeated the first round of security features in 1996 before the current standards. he found a paper that wouldn’t react to the marker by buying a marker from Staples and just swiping it across every bit of paper that he came across until he found one that was non-reactive. he used the automobile “chameleon” paint to make the color- changing “100” and etc. but he was a successful counterfeiter before that with all the traditional printing knowledge. he got busted eventually.
rollingstone.com no longer hosts the article, bafflingly, but a guy at gizmodo made a pdf:
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magnetic color-shifting ink from France
The story I’ve heard is that this ink is made by a company called SICPA in Lausanne, Switzerland. They will only sell a given combination of colours to one customer- so the US bought the rights to ink that shifted between green and black.
Very soon afterwards, North Korea paid SICPA for the rights to ink that shifted between green and magenta. This ink isn’t used on North Korean won banknotes, but according to the US Treasury, the ink can be manipulated in some way so the magenta looks black.
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Reminds me of the Canadian counterfeit loonie debacle. An outlaw motorcycle club wanted to get into the business of making money and found a guy with the skills to produce a perfect loonie copy, with very high quality. Higher than the real deal.
So high, in fact, that each counterfeit cost around $1.08 in material to produce.
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I don’t think that’s an error on the engraving, it indicates the direction light is coming from, over your left shoulder as you look at the scene.
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Two or three years ago I was in the check out line of my local grocer when a girl tried to pass a counterfeit $100 bill. The cashier caught that the bill was fake and called her out. The girl walked out. Walked out, not ran mind you. I was in line long enough to see that there was absolutely no visible effort to call the police. When I finally got to the register I asked why there was no effort to pursue the girl the cashier just shrugged like it happens every day. 
Thanks Kim.
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hey, tino!
you may want to let my fellow not-Canadians know that a loonie is a $1.00 coin.
pretty obvious from context, but could still be confusing
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Yeah, there needs to be a Canadian Rosetta Stone! 
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If people are interested in North Korea’s criminal activities, the BBC World Service podcast ‘The Lazarus Heist’ is worth your time. It covers the Sony hack, the billion dollars stolen from the Bank of Bangladesh and much creepiness besides:
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I’ll gladly add that the Canadian system of coinage for $1 and $2 denominations is far superior to our paper dollar and a mostly unused, almost novelty $2 bill.
the current value of a dollar is what the Canadians treat it as: pocket change. the reason nobody uses a two-dollar-bill is because it’s unwieldy to fish out a bill for what should be pocket change. we are just habituated to using bills for $1 because we started using them when a dollar was worth a day’s pay – it makes sense to use bills for large amounts. but now that a candy bar costs the better part of a dollar or more… not so much.
of course, there’s not much sense in changing now that most transactions are electronic.
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Nice work, though a counterfeit bill doesn’t have to be perfect - it just has to be accepted. NK has/had been printing them for years. Evidently, it is not uncommon in wartime to counterfeit the opponents money. NK also finances their government with top grade amphetamines shipped all over the world in Diplomatic bags.
The thing that stuck out to me in that paragraph was about the “terrified workers”. While I imagine that might be true, I also know that America makes people work sometimes 60+ hour weeks under the threat of being kicked out on to the street (and then being forced into our brutal jail system for the crime of sleeping on the street). North Korea doesn’t have a monopoly on terrified workers.
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It’s not a competition to see which country has the most terrified workers…
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The people making the supernotes were surely among the most skilful engravers and printers in North Korea, working to a level of sophistication and precision beyond anything found on North Korea’s own banknotes. If the officials in charge of the project had any sense, they would know that frightening their highly skilled craftspeople into working faster would only lead to entirely avoidable mistakes. The Supreme Leader wasn’t going to reward them for their speed if the supernotes turned out not to be so super.
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Re forcing/scaring highly skilled craftspeople into doing your bidding:
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