Discussion
North Korea's 100,000-strong fake IT worker army rake in $500M a year for Kim Jong Un
woah: How are these IT workers fake? Sounds like they are really doing the job.
dralley: Well, it sounds like they are effectively slaves to the government, who is raking in their income on their behalf, and would presumably be able to "activate" them as an insider threat at some point.
abtinf: I’m a little unclear on the usage of the word “fake” here.Going by article, these are real people doing actual real work, they often use stolen identities to conceal information about themselves, and they get help from outside sources to do their jobs better.Whatever the right word is, it’s not “fake”. Maybe fraudulent? Or ulterior motives? Or deceptive? Or pretext? Or threat actor? Or foreign agents?
1970-01-01: I don't think we have a word for this. At best, it is disingenuous work.
vlovich123: Reminds me of the Key & Peele sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYYOUC10aM> Once employed in a full-time role, fake workers are often very successful, since they sometimes have multiple people helping them to produce their work, with the hope of getting a promotion and gaining more privileged access to the IT systems.I think the "fake" part is the long term play to get enough privilege to presumably perform a cybersecurity attack. But less "fake" and more "spy" from the description - the outlined scheme is literally what spies agencies do.
spwa4: Well, it is (highly) illegal for them to do this. So they presumably lie about everything, like name, location, ...Perhaps fake is not the correct word, but the actual individuals are likely to have more than a few faked details. They do exist, of course.It's also very dubious becuase, well, would you really hire a worker from an organization that also does things like hack hospitals and then hold systems hostage for bitcoin?
gradyfps: To be fair, "illegal" here doesn't matter. North Korea doesn't follow American law.
SayThatSh: It's pretty impressive how far American salaries go in other countries. Between thousands of applications, if you manage to snag a single IT role with a larger corp you're potentially getting the local equivalent of dozens of people's regular income.
downrightmike: And it still doesn't come close to the value provided to the company
GuestFAUniverse: If anyone pays so much money to someone they never met, or _dependable_ know their identity, that seems like a major fail.The whole idea that someone who couldn't legally enter the US, gets easier clearance than any tourist, or foreign academic with an opinion about the current gov that seems uncomfortable to them baffles me.Not the first time some priorities seem out of touch with reality.
downrightmike: BuT They"Re sO cHeAp!
9rx: [deleted]
spwa4: Obviously, when working you have to follow the law both in the country where you live and the country where you work. Even in the case of remote work. Sadly, even if you just consult. So you can be pretty sure: highly illegal.
film42: Camera cuts to a tech bro at his desk with 3 jobs and 5 instances of Claude Code running:> I had [the Register] explain to me three times what [Kim] got arrested for because it sounds an awful lot like what I do here every day.
ge96: Camera zooms in from the bottom of the keyboardhttps://youtu.be/7HWfwLBqSQ4?si=LmKuVBRVQ0y03prP&t=52
FpUser: Who cares what they're called. Main concern in this case is that the result of their work poses danger to the US. Like a spies. They often do legit work and meanwhile some "extra"
catigula: The implication is that they're pretending to be legitimate employees whereas they are actually exfiltrating IP from a hostile nation state. Seems valid.
ForHackernews: You mean like the DOGE team?
ck2: Actual atomic weapons not just stockpile, hundreds stave to death there daily, and everyone knows the famous satellite view of the entire country in darkness at night (while his palace is lit)Yet no oil so they will be one of the longest surviving tyrannies in historyWe can bet every country like them now will be building massive war drone factories too
epolanski: > hundreds stave to death there dailyYeah, you will need a solid source for that.This isn't the 1990s, while malnutrition may happen, and there have been occasional shortages (covid was one example), it's unlikely people are starving to death in 2026, let alone multiple, let alone per day.On top of that: North Korea is not that isolated as people think. North Koreans have smartphones and plenty of those living near the chinese border have chinese sim cards. Ever wondered why defectors say they regularly phone their family? Because virtually every north korean knows somebody with a chinese phone.Of course flow of information outside is still tightly controlled and such, but there's zero direct evidence for starvation happening.
ck2: what a weird argument just to argueyou really have to ignore international news for years to argue starvation in North Korea isn't realkeep BBC News on in the background each morning and you'll learn stuff never mentioned anywhere on US newshttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65881803https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/04/12/north-koreas-leader-warn...it's been going on for decades and yes even though 2026
simonbw: The point is that there are legit American citizens who are in on the con. They have real SSNs and an actual presence in the US. They run proxy servers out of their house to make it seem like that's where their web traffic is coming from. From the company's perspective, everything seems like a regular remote employee.
alephnerd: > The point is that there are legit American citizens who are in on the con...For example - https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/arizona-woman-sentenced-17m-i...
Bombthecat: Spies, at the end of the day they are spies.
narrator: [delayed]
OutOfHere: How is it that corporations can't get their act together wrt sensible hiring of remote workers? Before giving someone a final offer letter, why is it so difficult to meet them once (somewhere outside of North Korea and China)? The cost is negligible compared to a large salary.What corporations actually do for verification also is equally damning. They ask for references, which no coworker really has an obligation to give, and it comes in the way of independent thought. Meanwhile, those from North Korea will sail through this blocker by having their fellow countrymen serve as references.
simonbw: I mean, if the North Korean employees are doing good work, the companies employing them aren't exactly incentivized to find out that they're really North Koreans, cuz then they have an obligation to fire their actually productive employee.
OutOfHere: Huh. The onus is to do the personal verification during the interview and offer process. It doesn't make any sense to do it once the employee has already been onboarded.
gpm: It's not the lack of oil that enabled this. The west* fought a bloody war to defeat North Korea. We just didn't win (though we did prevent the north from taking the south...). Now you've got a dictatorship protected by their ability to deal devastating damage to South Korea via nukes, huge stockpiles of conventional artillery (and Seoul is within range), etc. Moreover one backed by a superpower (China, and before China the soviet union... indeed these countries are the reason the west didn't win the first war as well).They could have all the oil in the world and we'd be no more in a position to do anything about it.*US, Uk, Australia, Netherlands, Canada, France, New Zealand, Phillipines, Tukey, Thailand, South Africa, Greece, Belgum, Luxembourg, Ethopia, Columbia, and South Korea.
AnimalMuppet: We didn't win because China intervened in massive numbers to keep the regime in the North from losing the whole country.
FpUser: The US did not win because the US did not win. Crying about the reasons does not help. Usual FAFO. Does not hurt to think of consequences before starting something
gpm: South Korea and its allies did not win - but they did successfully defeat the North Korean invasion of South Korea that started the war. Resulting in 53 million people today who live good lives in a high tech liberal democracy instead of living in abject poverty under the dictatorship that controls the north.Despite not winning, the consequences of the western nations going to war in this case appear to have been significantly positive. It's really the only war since WWII that I think I can confidently say that about.
NoMoreNicksLeft: >why is it so difficult to meet them once (somewhere outside of North Korea and China)? The cost is negligible compared to a large salary.It wouldn't matter. They'd hire some actor to do it. If you insist that they take precautions to be sure the person in the video interview looks like the guy they meet, they'll do that too... but the one doing the work will do so remotely from Pyongyang. There might be technology fixes for this, but they almost certainly involve isolating the United States' internet from most of the rest of the world.
mlmonkey: A friend of mine got two such "fake" candidates for a coding interview. His experience reminded me of those "Nigerian Prince" emails from 20 years ago. These two gentlemen had western names (like "Brandon Smith") but Asian features and a tenuous grasp of spoken English; even though they claimed to have undergrad degrees from US universities. And he could tell they were looking at another screen to copy code from. After just a few minutes he realized what was going on, but continued the interview just to get the experience.
rustyhancock: Frankly sounds like many "real" candidates I've interviewed.The tenuous grasp of spoken English despite a degree taught in English is also not unusual.Setting aside the fraud for a moment (which is an insurmountable barrier to employeeing them).To some extent I'd be satisfied if they actually had a degree and were productive. They obviously need good enough receptive and written English to work.Especially if they are earning 5k per year as the title suggests.
ambicapter: Weird take on legality. They're working American jobs, breaking American law. Yes it matters.
NoMoreNicksLeft: If we could prosecute and incarcerate them, how likely is it that a US prison is still an improvement over living in North Korea?
cj: [delayed]
staplung: The numbers in the headline seem odd. They imply that each (fake|fraudulent) worker only nets $5000 per year for Kim. I know the system has some inefficiencies where people behind the scenes are helping the "employee" with the work and there are cost of living expenses, taxes etc. but that seems like a pretty low take.
daemonologist: I had the same thought - I guess there's additional overhead in paying the in-country proxy and probably also a lot of churn (being found out and fired, and then taking a long time to find another position).
chirpp: 5k a year could be 2 weeks of onboarding or waiting out a bureaucratic PIP process.Its also possible that its a numbers game and only 2/3 succeed at getting hired.
ryandrake: Came here to post this. I'm glad someone else thought of it. "Hear me out... we're going to rip of Western companies by... get this... writing code for them and taking home a paycheck week after week. They're just going to give us the money!!"
ryandrake: A proxy server can't fool an in-person interview. Totally bizarre how in-person interviews have fallen out of fashion, now that they're needed the most.
dopesoap: It's North Korea though and they're all eViL. Imagine a world where the U.S lifted sanctions on N.K. traded with them and stopped crying about losing a war 70 years ago. Ah well a boy can dream.Edit: Lol saying anything positive about North Korea on hacker news and people instantly freak out. This fucking website man. North Korea isn't what I would call a free society but it's also not the hell on earth that most liberals want you to think it is. So much of the misery that normal North Koreans have to face is because of western imposed sanctions. We've tried punishing them for 30 years now, it hasn't destroyed the regime if anything they double down. I guess it's easy for a bunch of overfed over paid tech workers to not feel any kind of solidarity for a North Korean though and insist on punishing them even more. Hell the North Korean government would even be open for this kind of agreement if we would actually guarantee their sovereignty, sadly trusting the United States of America to hold up any kind of deal you make with them is fucking impossible.Here is a quote I came up with but is attributed to Henry KissingerHaving the United States as your enemy is dangerous, but having them as your friend is fatal.That old bag liked it so much he had no problem taking credit for it.
948382828528: Sure, let's prop up a communist dictatorship so the leftists can run their concentration camps more efficiently.Brilliant idea, comrade.
mikkupikku: Even other communist dictatorships are pretty sick of North Korea's shit!
jhj: This might include people working in lumber camps in places like Siberia, "mercenaries" in Ukraine, people in NK-managed restaurants in China, Laos etc, or similar efforts that have been reported on, where the average revenue per worker is likely a lot lower.
FpUser: No need for political lecture. This was a simple point of win / win not.
gpm: When you imply there was "fucking around and finding out" and "[negative] consequences" to a war that had positive consequences, and which was a war the other side chose, there absolutely is a need to correct that.
sam-cop-vimes: I agree - this is closer to bonded labor though the paying employer doesn't know it. Instead most of their earnings go to their actual employer (which is the North Korean state). "slave" maybe is more appropriate? "prisoner"?
calvinmorrison: most of my earnings go to my employer too... we bill clients at X and I get a small portion of it
MrPapz: Exactly. As slave as them.
tylerchilds: Not an apt metaphor because we can just walk away and never see our employers again if that’s our free will.
wahnfrieden: You’ll lose your health insurance
memonkey: I know we're getting deep in the meta discussion but the free will that you're describing involves basically starving to death. Sure, you can walk away but unless you're well off, we all basically live in the same society that makes sure you are ALWAYS dependent on some kind of wage. You cannot live off the land, build housing, or eat food without some kind of income in the modern world. And thus the concept of wage slave.
bit-anarchist: But wage slavery, while bad, isn't slavery still. In slavery proper, the option of walking away straight up doesn't exist. In fact, in extreme cases, even the option of dying might not be available.
tt24: Sounds like having a w2 is a pretty good deal for you then.Slavery isn’t defined by “I don’t want to talk away because the deal is too good”, it’s more like “I’m unable to walk away because I’m threatened with force if I do so”
wahnfrieden: I moved to Canada instead of tying myself to a w2
