A federal court in St Louis has indicted 14 North Koreans for allegedly being part of a long-running conspiracy aimed at extorting funds from US companies and funneling money to Pyongyang’s weapons programmes.
The wider scheme allegedly involves thousands of North Korean IT workers who use false, stolen, and borrowed identities from people in the US and other countries to get hired and work remotely for US firms.
The indictement says the defendants and others working with them generated at least $88m (£51.5m) for the North Korean regime over a six-year period.
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The prosecutors say the suspects worked for two North Korean-controlled companies - China-based Yanbian Silverstar and Russia-based Volasys Silverstar.
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Oh no! People making money by … checks notes … working for it!!
No, I don’t care that they are doing it for a communist regime bent on developing nuclear weapons. The only consistent result of depriving rogue states of money and trade is the starvation of their people. Its a little hard to overthrow or reform a government on an empty stomach.
These people didn’t work to earn money their families, they worked for the regime using stolen identities. North Koreans are not even allowed to get in touch with companies (or individuals) in the West, let alone work for them.
… and yet, North Koreans did this work, and I addressed the money issue from the regime-level down.
Stealing Identities to get work does not imply the ruined the credit of those people. Getting worked up over this is NOT all that far off from getting worked up over immigrant laborers stealing identities so they can work and feed their families, or recieve food stamps or medical care. At least those last two kinda-sorta have victims, and yet I still prefer immigrants be able to eat.
Sorry, you’re not going to be able to get me to buy into the fear-mongering hysteria-machine by apeing thier narratives. I’m not saying your arguments are invalid, just addressing them from the same surface-level reading you gave mine.
These people didn’t work to ‘feed their families’. Their families likely didn’t benefit at all from this scheme.
How do you know?
It is directly in the article. It is impossible for civilians to do this. In an absolute sense.
Lastly, the aggressive countering nature of this comment was unnecessary if you were merely seeking clarification.
I know of nothing whatsoever that proves this. The article certainly doesn’t clarify anything to that effect.
It was four words, without any emphasis. I deliberately wrote my comment to be simple and calm. Any aggression you’ve interpreted is on you, not me, and I suspect you only read it that way due a to a pre-existing negative opinion of me.
Yet you dispute things which reference it without trying to learn more about it yourself. Instead you ask others and dispute them like it is owed to you.
It is not anyone’s problem in particular that someone doesn’t know something. You could’ve ignored the post and comments, or you could’ve genuinely sought to know more if you cared. While putting in your own effort to supplement it.
Perhaps I could plaster everything you say with ‘how do you know’. Not that I’m going to do it because I know how malicious doing so would be. The lack of elaboration in dispute is anything but ‘simple and calm’ because your question puts the obligation on the person saying anything to absolutely answer to you without the assurance that you actually care about the topic and want to know more, and not that you do not care about the topic regardless. Elaborate more. That would be simple and calm, if the elaboration were put in a simple and calm manner.
The presence of remote working itself exposes the flaws with the arguer’s chain of comments. It is (and it is funny that I can actually make this conclusion) impossible that the money does not go directly to the North Korea regime. North Korean civilians have no internet.
Repeating the same tired gibberish with no elabbration, much?
These aren’t ‘common’ IT workers seeking a job but spies working for North Korea as the article says. What should I elaborate here?
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From the article
Correct me if I’m wrong, but North Korean civilians have no access to internet.
Rather spies, soldiers, whatever, work remotely for western companies than whatever other bull their government wants them doing.
There’s a height of feigned ignorance. There’s no chance the money goes anywhere than directly to the military government. Not to “families”.
I don’t think anyone is disputing that they shouldn’t be stealing identities, but are they in fact doing the work they’re being paid for? That’s just called having a job. It’s not like the US government isn’t using tax money to fund its continued arms development, including nukes.
Given that in North Korea military jobs are the most stable ways to provide for your family, I’d say both are likely true.
The problem for the ordinary non-political person could still be that the allegation is the work was remotely done from North Korea using remote control software on computers in the US set up by people off paid in the US; no one other than the military-based government is capable of doing this as things are. A government not generous enough to let a decent share see it made back to ‘families’ anyway. It would be a small part at most.
The model of North Korea is mainly oppressing its own citizens, and trying a bit to oppress others as well. I don’t particularly feel sympathy for those who feel it is justified and righteous to join such an endeavour such as its military for the same of ‘feeding families’. I rather feel sympathy for those these people oppress—whether the people harming them do so out of their own choice, or because they feel there’s no other way than to go along with it to survive while believing that as long as they themselves are not in a bad situation it is fine. Causing problems for others, aiding in causing problems for others, is never fine based on any sort of justification. Even if most (if not all) governments in the world are, in some way or another, engaged in it.
In the end every horrible deed done for gain by people who have people they care for can be said to be done for ‘feeding families’ in this sense. The powerless being oppressed certainly have more real concerns to worry about than the persons harming them possibly justifying it by doing it for feeding their families, and even I do not particularly see any merit in it.
Depending on the validity of the article, they also did a little extortion in addition to just working, so not just having a job. Not saying that wasn’t part of their job on the NK side, but the salary wasn’t the only money involved.