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SEOUL, South Korea — A North Korean defector who claims to have helped the Kim Jong Il regime make fake U.S. currency has gone into hiding amid charges that he fabricated stories for money.

A second high-ranking defector who claimed he was in on the decision in Pyongyang to print bogus U.S. $100 bills admits that he never saw it being done.

If there are defectors with ironclad accounts to corroborate the Bush administration's assertions that North Korea is printing counterfeit U.S. $100 bills, they can't be found, even with vigorous effort.

One defector, who emerged in press accounts in late 2005 and early 2006 under the pseudonym "the chemist," has gone underground, leaving a wake of acquaintances who now say they don't trust anything he says.

That man, Kim Dong-shik, had told people since his defection in 2000 that he's a North Korean with a Ph.D. in chemistry who helped his country design fake U.S. currency.

But a human-rights researcher who spent a month living with Kim in December 2005 to determine whether he was credible "came to the conclusion that he was a liar."

"On the fake bills, I don't believe what he says," said Moon Kook-han of the North Korean Human Rights International Association, a small, non-profit group that works closely with U.S. activists on North Korea.

"I asked him which president is on a $100 bill. He didn't know. Moreover, I asked him to describe the building on the bill, and he said, 'I don't know,' " Moon said, referring to the likeness of Benjamin Franklin (who never served as president) on the front of the bill and Independence Hall in Philadelphia on the back.

"He said he was the chief designer of the bill. It doesn't make sense. If he were the chief designer, he would know all these details," Moon said,

Another defector with supposed knowledge of counterfeiting is Kim Duk-hong, who left North Korea in 1997. Kim Duk-hong (no relation to the other defector) was a member of the Korean Workers' Party Central Committee for 17 years and involved in high-level decision-making.

In an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Kim Duk-hong said he never learned details about how North Korea gained the know-how to make supernotes, nor did he ever witness counterfeiting operations.