A federal court in St Louis has indicted 14 North Koreans for allegedly being part of a long-running conspiracy aimed at extorting funds from US companies and funneling money to Pyongyang’s weapons programmes.
The wider scheme allegedly involves thousands of North Korean IT workers who use false, stolen, and borrowed identities from people in the US and other countries to get hired and work remotely for US firms.
The indictement says the defendants and others working with them generated at least $88m (£51.5m) for the North Korean regime over a six-year period.
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The prosecutors say the suspects worked for two North Korean-controlled companies - China-based Yanbian Silverstar and Russia-based Volasys Silverstar.
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I don’t think anyone is disputing that they shouldn’t be stealing identities, but are they in fact doing the work they’re being paid for? That’s just called having a job. It’s not like the US government isn’t using tax money to fund its continued arms development, including nukes.
The problem for the ordinary non-political person could still be that the allegation is the work was remotely done from North Korea using remote control software on computers in the US set up by people off paid in the US; no one other than the military-based government is capable of doing this as things are. A government not generous enough to let a decent share see it made back to ‘families’ anyway. It would be a small part at most.
Given that in North Korea military jobs are the most stable ways to provide for your family, I’d say both are likely true.
The model of North Korea is mainly oppressing its own citizens, and trying a bit to oppress others as well. I don’t particularly feel sympathy for those who feel it is justified and righteous to join such an endeavour such as its military for the same of ‘feeding families’. I rather feel sympathy for those these people oppress—whether the people harming them do so out of their own choice, or because they feel there’s no other way than to go along with it to survive while believing that as long as they themselves are not in a bad situation it is fine. Causing problems for others, aiding in causing problems for others, is never fine based on any sort of justification. Even if most (if not all) governments in the world are, in some way or another, engaged in it.
In the end every horrible deed done for gain by people who have people they care for can be said to be done for ‘feeding families’ in this sense. The powerless being oppressed certainly have more real concerns to worry about than the persons harming them possibly justifying it by doing it for feeding their families, and even I do not particularly see any merit in it.
I don’t particularly feel sympathy for those who feel it is justified and righteous to join such an endeavour such as its military for the same of ‘feeding families’.
In the end every horrible deed done for gain by people who have people they care for can be said to be done for ‘feeding families’ in this sense.
This isn’t equivalent to people getting rich by doing bad stuff, this is literally people who would be starving otherwise, like many others in NK are. And doing remote tech work isn’t a “horrible deed”. You have to actually apply nuance. You can’t run to “anyone who works for the NK government for any reason is bad.” This is the same logic that Israel uses to call the Gaza Health Ministry and other civil services “combatants”.
The people who suffer due to not making that decision will feel otherwise.
And it is nothing alike. Health Ministry and civil service are nothing like being employed in a military government where funds go directly to the government which aids in putting the systems of both suppression and oppression in place.
It isn’t quite in the level of North Korea but I live in a pretty bad place and pretty much on the opposite side of those who made the decision to join up. Those people might complain but the ones who have made the decision not to aid anyone who harms everyone else have it much worse. In my situation it is their fight for luxury against my, and others’, need for basic sustenance and protecting our basic dignity (which usually isn’t respected) due to that one choice. In a place like North Korea the difference will be much worse, however incomprehensible it may seem.
In my situation it is their fight for luxury
Then your situation is not the same. They’re not fighting for “luxury”, they are also fighting for basic sustenance.
Frankly, I’m not going to take anyone but other North Koreans’ opinion on condemning this. We can both (clearly) converse on Beehaw without being arrested or killed. And no matter how you keep avoiding the point, doing illegal remote tech work and handing the paycheck directly to the government, is not any different than doing legal remote tech work and handing taxes directly to the government.
Governments get money, governments build weapons.
