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发帖数: 11737 | 1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/world/asia/05korea.html?_r=4
SEOUL, South Korea — The North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has found a novel
way of raising badly needed cash, according to the South Korean authorities:
unleashing young hackers on South Korea’s immensely popular online gaming
sites to find ways to rack up points convertible to cash.
Despite its decrepit economy, North Korea is believed to train an army of
computer programmers and hackers. The police in Seoul said Thursday that
four South Koreans and a Korean-Chinese had been arrested on charges of
drawing on that army to organize a hacking squad of 30 young video gaming
experts.
Working from Northern China, the police said, the squad created software
that breached the servers for such popular South Korean online gaming sites
as “Lineage” and “Dungeon and Fighter.” The breach allowed round-the-
clock play by “factories” of dozens of unmanned computers.
Their accumulated gaming points were exchanged for cash at Web sites where
human players are focused on acquiring enhancements for their online
personas, or avatars. The gaming software was also sold, the police said;
such factories, while illegal, are common in South Korea and China.
In a little less than two years, the police said, the organizers made $6
million. They gave 55 percent of it to the hackers, who forwarded some of it
to agents in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. “They regularly
contacted North Korean agents for close consultations,” Chung Kil-hwan, a
senior officer at the police agency’s International Crime Investigation
Unit, said during a news briefing.
Mr. Chung said the hackers, all graduates of North Korea’s elite science
universities, were dispatched from two places: the state-run Korea Computer
Center in Pyongyang and the Korea Neungnado General Trading Company. The
company, he said, reports to a shadowy Communist Party agency called Office
39, which gathers foreign hard currency for Mr. Kim through drug trafficking
, counterfeiting, arms sales and other illicit activities.
South Korean and American officials say they believe the slush fund is worth
billions, and that Mr. Kim uses it to help finance his nuclear weapons
programs and to smuggle Rolex watches and other luxury goods, which he doles
out to buy the allegiance of the party and the military elite. Meanwhile,
the bulk of his people suffer privation and myriad hardships.
A series of United Nations sanctions imposed after North Korea’s nuclear
and ballistic missile tests in recent years aim to squeeze the cash flow by
curtailing trade with the North Korean companies suspected of illicit
activities. They also ban exports of luxury goods to North Korea.
The North Korean computer experts were each required to send at least $500 a
month back to the Pyongyang government, the police said. It remained
unclear how much of the rest of their profits they pocketed for themselves,
given different layers of party and military officials involved in a typical
illicit operation.
What appeared clear from the case, the police said, was that North Korean
agencies, increasingly hamstrung by international sanctions, were exploring
any new means to raise cash for Mr. Kim and prove their loyalty. The two
Koreas, which have remained technically at war for almost 60 years, operate
in an environment of mutual suspicion. The tensions extend to the virtual
world: Seoul accused North Korea of spreading malicious software that
paralyzed the Web sites of South Korean government agencies and financial
institutions in July 2009 and again in March. In May, the South blamed North
Korea for an attack that brought down a South Korean bank’s network.
North Korea denied responsibility and accused Seoul of inventing a
conspiracy. | E***s
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