THE PACHINKO BOMB

Japan's pachinko obsession is funding North Korea's nuclear program:

Pachinko, deeply loved in Japan, is an industry largely run by ethnic Koreans, and experts have long believed the revenues are a vital source of hard currency for the impoverished Pyongyang regime.

The machines are believed to rake in more than 27 trillion yen a year, some of which finds its way to North Korea. Official figures put the sum of remittances to North Korea from sources in Japan at 3 billion yen in fiscal 2005, more than 90 percent of which was hand-delivered.

But the bookkeeping is murky and some think the real sum could be as high as to 10 billion yen. No one knows how much of it derives directly from pachinko and how much from another major source of income for North Korea in Japan -- imported methamphetamines.

Nuclear weapons financed by fake bank notes, gambling and drugs; the next thing you know, Las Vegas will have the bomb.