How North Korea exploits the internet

Computers and electronics for sale at an international trade expo in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, in 2017.   Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

How North Korea exploits the internet

“Our entire concept of how to control the North’s financial engagement with the world is based on an image of the North that is fixed in the past.”

That’s a former National Security Agency analyst whose new study says that North Korea’s internet use has surged about 300 percent since 2017 — and that the bandwidth has allowed the country to move money around the world in defiance of international sanctions, to mine and steal cryptocurrencies and to unleash its hackers.