North Korea's Macau-based trading venture opens its doors to deny reports of espionage and shady deals

A SECRET door to the closed world of North Korea opened last week when a senior official discussed activities of the mysterious Zokwang trading company in Macau, providing a revealing insight into the Stalinist nation's activities on the South China coast.

Over cups of Chinese tea, poured while he talked beneath portraits of his nation's late Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, and the current Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, vice-general managing director Han Myong-chol outlined his company's links to Pyongyang.

The interview with the South China Morning Post was remarkably free of any ideology or rhetoric. Mr Han also spoke of his hopes that the two Koreas could reunite.

It was clear that Kim Jong-il's overtures to the international community and Seoul over the past six months had allowed the wooden door to swing open to the austere offices on the fifth floor of an anonymous-looking building at 25 Avenida De Sidonio Pais in a residential district of downtown Macau, near the Guia lighthouse.

After enduring years of allegations by intelligence agents and reports in the international media that North Korean companies in Macau were engaging in illegal activities such as laundering forged currency and supplying luxury goods to the ruling elite, Mr Han said he wanted to set the record straight.

Pyongyang's diplomats have been accused of drug trafficking, gun running and conducting abductions around the world to earn foreign currency for the regime. Sinister crimes and conspiracies are said to have been hatched in Macau. North Korean agent Kim Hyon-hui, dubbed the 'virgin terrorist', claimed she had spent several months training there before blowing up a Korean Airlines jet with 115 people on board in 1987.