North Korea’s Highly Paid Cyber-Warriors Steal the Billions Needed To Finance Nuclear and Missile Programs

President Trump faces a challenge that may be more difficult than denuclearization if he ever gets another summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. That’s North Korea’s hyper-intense program of cybercrime as seen in the record theft of $6.3 billion from Binance, reputedly the world’s largest cryptocurrency firm.The president attempted to soften the blow by saying over the weekend that “they’re saying they have it pretty much under control” and “they’re going to get it back,” but he did not say who “they” were or how it would be possible to recover funds that have not yet been frozen. The FBI, meanwhile, has confirmed the North Koreans made off with the astronomical sum, several times the previous record theft, in a matter of 20 minutes.North Korea’s success in stealing much of the money it needs to finance its nuclear and missile program climaxes years of hacking into accounts around the world, including many in South Korea. The program is now so advanced, according to South Korean reports, that “cyber-warriors,” as Mr. Kim’s late father, Kim Jong-il called them, are now as valued as the physicists and engineers responsible for the North’s nuclear program.“North Korean hackers receive performance-based bonuses, taking 5 to 10 percent of stolen amounts as incentives,” says a report by South Korea’s biggest-selling newspaper, Chosun Ilbo. North Korea’s ace cyber-warriors, probably the 300 or so most highly skilled, unlike the legions of North Korean workers in subsistence-level jobs, make the equivalent in North Korean currency of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually and are exempt from joining the armed forces.While “working over 12 hours daily to meet quotas,” says the Chosun Ilbo report, “the status as Pyongyang’s privileged class outweighs the stress.”For Washington, the challenge of penetrating North Korea’s cybercrime industry is, if anything, far more difficult than uncovering inside information on the North’s nuclear and missile programs. The difficulty is that North Korea often boasts of missile tests while refusing to consider giving up research and production of nuclear warheads, legitimized in the North’s constitution.In the case of cybercrime, the North Korean propaganda machine fails to mention it at all. Pyongyang does not signal or threaten or hint at plans to steal millions or billions, in bitcoin. North Korean cybercrimes are if anything far more closely guarded than its missile program. North Korean experts at stealing bitcoin have gained access to private companies, gumming up their activities and stealing their plans. Mr. Kim has ignored entreaties by Washington and Seoul for talks, but even when he did meet Mr. Trump three times, in 2018 and 2019, they said not a word about cybercrime.Nor is it likely Mr. Kim will discuss it any time soon even though Mr. Trump did say, “We don’t know if it’s North Korea, but if it is, we’ll talk to North Korea about it.”Now the chances of coming to terms with North Korea are lower than ever despite Mr. Trump’s claim to get along great with Mr. Kim. “What do you do when they won’t talk to you,” asks a former CIA analyst, Bruce Klingner. “We can’t get them to come to the negotiating room or even answer messages.”Not that the FBI hasn’t come up with some useful information. The FBI did pinpoint the name of the man who was said to have gotten into Sony Pictures 12 years ago. Sony was about to release a hysterical satire, “The Interview,” on Mr. Kim and the North Korean system. The hack, utilizing a virus called WannaCry, was so successful that Sony had to pull “The Interview.”It was still possible to see the film on YouTube, but the hack showed the power of North Korean cybercrime. The culprit, a mysterious figure named Park Jin Hyok, was also said to have gotten into the system of a bank in Bangladesh, extracting $81 million – small change in comparison to some of the hacks in recent years.Now the thefts are measured in billions, not millions of dollars. “North Korean state-sponsored hackers have a history of major cybercrimes, including stealing $308 million from DMM Bitcoin in 2024 and $620 million from Ronin Network in 2022,” writes a Bentley University professor, Steve Weisman, in Forbes. “Korean hackers stole approximately $2 billion of cryptocurrencies in 2025, accounting for 60% of global cryptocurrency thefts that year.”Sophisticated North Korean hackers revel in selecting odd, sardonic names. The one that penetrated Bifinance is named TraderTraitor.The South Korean website, Yonhap News. reported on the complexity of extracting funds. The loot was converted into Ethereum, said the agency “The FBI warned that the hackers were expected to further launder the stolen assets through decentralized finance platforms and cryptocurrency exchange services that allow users to quickly swap one digital asset for another,” according to Yonhap.Mr. Trump, however, still counts on the personal relationship he formed with Mr. Kim when they met in June 2018 to deflect the North Korean leader from the excesses of cyber terrorism. “You know why,” he asked rhetorically. “Because he respects me and he likes me.”

North Korea’s Highly Paid Cyber-Warriors Steal the Billions Needed To Finance Nuclear and Missile Programs

North Korea’s Highly Paid Cyber-Warriors Steal the Billions Needed To Finance Nuclear and Missile Programs

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