Japanese Gambling Funds North Korea Nuclear Build-up

Who would've thunk it:

Gambling at pachinko was a lot more fun for Reiko Kuzuhara until she began to wonder whether maybe — just maybe — her losses were helping North Korea build nuclear weapons.

It's a kind've pinball game:

Pachinko is an upright pinball game played at tens of thousands of brightly lit parlors across the country. Success is measured in little steel payoff balls, which can be exchanged for cash or other prizes.

How much are the North Koreans getting?:

"It's very difficult to say how much cash is actually going from Japan to the North," said Toshio Miyatsuka, a North Korea specialist at Yamanashi Gakuin University in central Japan who has written a book about the pachinko industry.

"But it does seem certain that a lot of it is winding up in the hands of the North Korean government and military, and that includes money earned from drugs and pachinko," he added.