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Comment by curiousgal | Hacker News Reader

> "My favorite interview question, because we've interviewed quite a few of these folks, is something to the effect of 'How fat is Kim Jong Un?' They terminate the call instantly, because it's not worth it to say something negative about that,"

They likely terminate the call because you come across as so naive and simplistic that you're unlikely to be in possession of any good IP worth stealing.

Edit: I am confused, on one hand these are sophisticated state sponsored actors, on the other, they can't respond "I don't know?". Which one is it? I think this whole "North Koreans are afraid of offending Kim Jong Un" is an overplayed trope.

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Or it can be auto-triggered. I remember a history of a Call of Duty game were a number of players were being annoying, cheating and making the game horrible to play. Someone wrote in the chat "Tiananmen Square massacre" and instantly more than half the players were disconnected.

Or maybe if you keep the convo about KJU being fat, you trigger an alarm that schedule a police visit to your house, in a state were they first act and then ask.

In a communist/totalitarian regime, you don't want to give informants any leverage. The fear of it being recorded and used against you is enough. Also, if the regime were to give permission to speak in this manner, it risks normalizing irreverence toward Kim Jong Un, including employees working in espionage.

Wow, it even works on HN!

https://fortune.com/2025/04/10/north-korean-it-workers-spamm...

You can just generalise the question like these interviewers. I’d criticise Kim Jong Un just to see what was up with this interview question.

No. All it took is to call them out for being North Korean and they terminated the call.

North Korean spotted

Nice Try Kim Jong Un

Surely it's not stupidiif it works?

There is a large contingent of society that will even call you a terrible person if it works. shrug

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