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Comment by decafninja | Hacker News Reader

I'm Korean American; my dad is an elder at a big Korean American church. Several years ago a missionary came asking for donations of computers which he would take to North Korea to teach computer skills.

In any case, my dad called for a meeting of the church leadership and put a stop to it, but that was a big WTF moment. Is sending computer equipment and/or teaching North Koreans computer skills even legal from the US standpoint? I don't remember if said missionary was an American citizen or a South Korean one.

The same goes for a lot of aid that gets sent there. That people are suffering there is tragic, but it is so easy for aid to be diverted to primarily benefit the Kim dynasty and its closest circles while the majority of the country doesn't reap the benefits.

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I understand your point, but the fear sounds overblown. North Korea isn't some isolated kingdom in the Andes - they have a long border with China, over which the US has no control.

If NK wants to raise a hacker army, I don't think the existence of some used computers donated by American churches would make a meaningful difference.

* That said, we also have to consider the danger of the US government deciding the donation is illegal, so ... (shrug)

In addition to the host country's potential concerns, donated computers often contain private data that the donator thinks has been deleted. If a country is known to have a hacker program, I certainly wouldn't want my computer going there even if they can buy factory grade ones.

"If a country is known to have a hacker program"

In other words, any modern country?

Drives should be zeroed before getting sent off anyways.

My knowledge of NK is fairly limited, but I genuinely don't see what help would computers do to NK. Do they have access to the internet? What good do computers do without an internet connection? Maybe you can play some games, maybe you can load some software like spreadsheets but that's assuming they have books to learn how to use it. Would it be for training so they can get some better jobs? Are there computer jobs?

I had a computer for 12 years before my first Internet connection. Actually didn't have a modem at all.

It was hugely influential in my development. I drew things, animated things, made music, wrote school papers and a neighborhood newsletter, made videos with wipes and title cards, wrote my first resume (at 15, hah), and of course played some games.

I give a tremendous amount of credit to having that in the home for my current computer literacy and career path.

Back in the old days we learned about computers without the internet.

You had mainly paper documentation. With 10 or so of the best tech manuals to read, and a bunch of old machines to network together, and a few CDs of useful software, the right person could easily become highly skilled.

And by definition hacking means working out things that aren't already known (by many at least) so the absence of say stackoverflow and the other joys of the internet wouldn't slow those guys down either.

>>What good do computers do without an internet connection?

I mean, computers have accelerated nearly every single industrial process they touched by few orders of magnitude, long before internet was a thing. They will be used exactly for the same purpose in NK still - operating machinery, operating poing of sale systems, keeping inventory, teaching.....also NK has intranet network, while the knowledge about it is limited, it's basically a very restricted and heavily filtered version of internet available to North Koreans.

There are accounts from people who have even tought computer science in NK:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4m8qx/how-to-teach-computer...

And general reports on what they use:

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-using-a-computer-in-nor...

So yeah, there are absolutely computer jobs in the country.

NK has a fairly good Internet connection through China.

Outside Internet is available to the elites.

And yes, they have zero impediment smuggling just anything through China. Anecdotes tell of latest RolceRoyces on streets of Pyongyang.

The economy of North Korea is an enigma, but despite decades of very poor planning, they do have industry. I'm sure they have jobs that need basic computer literacy.

It's actually possible that the NK hackers are taking blame on behalf of CCP. Would take too long to explain fully. Just imagine NK as a "blame proxy" for CCP when it comes to the edgiest operations

Sounds plausible, but is there any sort of evidence or indication that this is happening?

the same evidence thats used to blame everything else on the Russians.

There's a major IT/Business school in Pyongyang largely staffed and administered by U.S. based missionaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_University_of_Scienc...

There was the timber hauling truck converted into an ICBM launcher. With the deforestation apparently happening in North Korea it probably wasn't the best thing to sell them regardless.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-china...

I'm not sure what your point is. I can see you make two diametrically opposed arguments with that example:

A) Even seemingly harmless tools can be turned into dangerous weapons and they've done so before, so the best course of action is to not support them at all because they'll just turn around and try to hurt us.

B) Even seemingly harmless tools can be turned into dangerous weapons so there's no point in obsessing whether what we give them could be used for nefarious purposes as they'll just come up with a way to hurt us if they want to anyway.

C) Dont forget FOSS ;-)

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