Perfect duplicate, Super Z1

This article today is not a thinker. It's just North Korea's counterfeiting. Let us follow a TV program aired Nov. 11th from TV asahi. (A big TV network, "TV asahi" was introduced here. It once showed irrational attitude on an argument of going nuclear. But as you will see, even TV asahi has to suck up to viewers whether they like North Korea or not. I guess TV asahi has learned programs on North Korea can win audience rate these days.)

The TV crew flew to Yanji, a town in China close to the border between China and North Korea. They are trying to find counterfeit bills, receiving news of money laundering in this town.

An antique dealer agreed to film this scene with masking their faces. He was about to sell $100 bills for Chinese yuan.


The crew probably bought some from him and turned in them to a pioneering researcher, Matsumura, who is famous for his differentiation machine.


He found the bills are fake in a second because the texture of the paper was too hard, and the hologram was coarse, too. Those bills with bad quality are said to be manufactured by underground private groups away from North Korean government.

However, the crew had obtained another bill from some other route. Matsumura got very shocked to examine this bill. "That's almost the same as a real one!" He concluded it was fake with a slight difference of ink bleed. He pointed that this newest version of counterfeit bill has been recently improved from the last one, Super Z, so it is named Super Z1. The hologram, which looks green or black according to the angle you are looking with, is of course perfect.

In the first place, we don't know much about transition of North Korea's counterfeit bills. Let us get it straight about Super Z and Super Z1. Super Z was the newest one which was perfect except for one small difference in the hand of the clock.
The hand is sticking out in the real one whereas the fake one is within the circle. That's amazingly the only difference we can easily find in Super Z. The newest version, Super Z1, has overcome this defect. "Very frequent checks and improvements have been done by the counterfeiting group," said Matsumura.

I have no comments today since US government has already taken an action. Of course Tokyo can't be an idle spectator. Counterfeit bills of Japanese yen made in North Korea are very cunning, too!


There's one thing I want you to know about Japanese mass media. These TV programs generally report the facts as calm as they can, not the way they arouse viewers' nationalism. Plus, knowing Japan's mass media all suck, there's information you can get only from TVs. So we have to count on TVs to some extent, and they will survive while internet becomes prosperous.