The Quality Of The Meth Coming Out Of North Korea Would Make Even Walter White's Eyes Pop

AMC

Various news agencies have reported that five men were recently extradited to the U.S. from Thailand for their alleged involvement in a North Korean meth drug ring.

But that's not the real kicker.

Everyone knows that North Korea (allegedly) loves to push meth around the globe, but up till this point, no one was clear on just how epic North Korea's product actually was.

From Al Jazeera:

That crystal meth was later seized by law enforcement and tested to be more than 99 percent pure, even purer than the meth cooked by Walter White, the fictional teacher-turned-drug lord in the popular TV series, "Breaking Bad."

North Korea's not so well known for it's cutting edge technology, so it's pretty crazy they've reached that level of purity, considering the chemical precision that goes into drug production (not just the case for methamphetamine).

Which might just be the reason North Korea is so good at producing it. The Hermit Kingdom is notoriously isolated from any kind of official trade and is rife with starvation and disease.

"It does seem like [meth use] very widespread in North Korea. It wasn't viewed as an illicit drug, but more as just a kind of medicine," Isaac Stone Fish, an associate editor at the journal Foreign Policy, told Al Jazeera. "It's also an appetite suppressant in a country where malnutrition is very common."

China has for a long time sought to staunch the flow of the illicit drug across its borders. Meanwhile, Mexican cartels dominate the American market for meth.