The organization's origins trace to 1972, when Kim Jong Il created a department within the Workers' Party's Finance and Accounting division. According to defector Kim Kwang-jin, the name came from nothing more meaningful than the office number where operations first began. What started behind that unremarkable door grew into the largest of three so-called 'Third Floor offices' -- alongside Office 35 (intelligence) and Office 38 (legal financial activities). At its peak, Room 39 reportedly controlled up to 120 front companies, and its transactions may have accounted for 25 to 50 percent of North Korea's total GDP. The bureau has survived leadership transitions, internal reorganizations, and decades of international sanctions, adapting each time the outside world tried to shut it down.

Room 39's criminal operations span a remarkable range. Its counterfeit hundred-dollar bills were of such quality that they circulated widely before detection, earning designation as 'superdollars' by U.S. investigators. The bureau reportedly produced heroin by converting morphine into more potent opiates, synthesized methamphetamine, and even peddled counterfeit Viagra. On the legitimate side -- or at least the semi-legitimate side -- Room 39 managed foreign currency earnings from hotels catering to foreigners in Pyongyang, oversaw gold and zinc mining, and controlled agricultural and fisheries exports. In more recent years, the operation expanded into cryptocurrency exchange hacking, following the money wherever the digital frontier offered less scrutiny.

Perhaps the most audacious scheme involved North Korea's state-owned Korea National Insurance Corporation. KNIC obtained reinsurance contracts with international companies, then submitted fraudulent claims. Because the contracts were governed by North Korean law, international legal challenges proved futile. By 2014, KNIC held assets of 787 million British pounds and maintained offices in Hamburg and London. The European Union placed it under sanctions in 2015, citing links to Office 39. Thae Yong-ho, a North Korean diplomat who defected in 2016, estimated the insurance fraud generated 'tens of millions of dollars' annually -- a figure that likely understates the full scope of an operation designed, above all, to remain invisible.

Defectors have provided rare glimpses into how Room 39 moves money across borders. Ri Jong Ho, a former chairman of the Korea Kumgang Group who ran trading operations through China, described transferring cash by ship and train to circumvent sanctions. He oversaw a joint venture taxi company in Pyongyang, ran a shipping company, and managed a trading firm dealing in seafood, coal, and oil. Each enterprise served the same purpose: converting resources into foreign currency that could fund the regime's priorities. As international sanctions have tightened, Room 39 has not disappeared. It has adapted -- shifting to new front companies, new financial instruments, and new methods of obscuring the trail between a nondescript office in Pyongyang and bank accounts scattered across the globe.