> Not bad for a supposedly backwards repressed regime
What do you mean by supposedly?
> It also exposes a wider problem the crypto community are not addressing.
What wider problem? That money (in any form) can be stolen by a malevolent state?
What do you mean by supposedly?
> It also exposes a wider problem the crypto community are not addressing.
What wider problem? That money (in any form) can be stolen by a malevolent state?
The DPRK is often portrayed as incompetent, helpless state purely able to eke out an existence by the grace of China (to whom it is useful only as a sort of attack dog cum buffer state). So the fact that they've managed to run an operation that can steal this much crypto may come as a surprise to many. I don't imagine their intelligence agencies are quite on the same level of electronic warfare capabilities as USA, UK, Israel and friends, though.
> That money (in any form) can be stolen by a malevolent state?
Right but as we repeatedly saw in the last couple of years, a North Korean hacker could swindle some dope out of their $10k ape jpeg from across the globe at relatively little cost. They'll have a bit of a tougher job stealing that same $10k from someone's bank, from a safe deposit box, or hell even from a box under their bed. It requires another level of sophistication entirely and the costs and risks would be prohibitively high. I am sure if the North Korean state took issue with me personally and wanted to empty my bank account, they could probably make some headway ... but they'd likely get caught and they'd spend more time and effort doing so than they'd actually be able to retrieve.
If you're motivated, don't mind a very on-rails, restricted and relatively pricey tour, you can actually visit yourself: https://koryogroup.com - I've wanted to for a while, but I've spent less money to travel in other interesting places with fewer restrictions for longer, so it's hard to justify the expense.
An interesting read you might like is by a couple of Austrian guys who decided to hop on a train there, confusing and irritating border officials who didn't expect an invasion from the northern direction :) http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com
Probably the most accessible and interesting thing though, is a podcast series called "Blowback" (it's Season 3, the previous two were on the Cuban revolution and the Iraq war). Now obviously this isn't the current day but it presents a slightly more balanced view of the events leading up to and throughout the Korean War than your average American or Brit might have picked up through osmosis. It's fascinating, well-produced, well-sourced and has a very good soundtrack. Here's ep 1: https://www.stitcher.com/show/blowback/episode/s3-episode-1-...
As I said, there will be no good way to get any kind of verifiable account of how awful or how ok-ish is it is there. And I'm deliberately putting "ok-ish" as the upper limit because while I'm sure that all the ~20 million inhabitants aren't all living the prison camp lifestyle, I don't imagine your average North Korean has a particularly pleasant life.
Sorry, maybe not the answer you were hoping for but I hope you enjoy any or all of the things I suggested :)
You're quoting articles about poverty in North Korea at me as if I'm in denial about this, which is weird because I start and end my comment talking about how shit life is probably like there. It's a bit like you read a couple of words, got excited that you spotted one of The Reds and decided to call in an airstrike
He is making a point: it's foolish to assume North Korea is just a bunch of starving people with no heat, living in dilapidated Soviet-style buildings.
They've built nukes. They're pretty successful at hacking. It has capabilities the defy the stereotype.
I don’t know what you’re doing, feels a little bit like you’re trying to beat a statement out of me, or tell me I’m guilty of WrongThink.
I once read a blog post or something from someone who claimed to have gone to North Korea to teach Computer Science or something. This article sounds like it covers similar ground: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4m8qx/how-to-teach-computer....
Also, North Korea also has an elite. IIRC, a significant chunk of North Korean imports are luxury goods and modern consumer products to keep this elite happy.
What limited that before were the protections built in to the real banking system. Stealing a billion dollars and actually getting away with it was hard until cryptocurrencies were introduced with far fewer safeguards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_North_Ko...