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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Not gonna lie, I don’t really feel comfortable these days taking a U.S. courts’ word on this. Sounds more likely to me that this is just a result of companies that happen to be run from North Korea and that this only “[funnels] money to Pyongyang’s weapons programmes” in the same way that buying something off Amazon “funnels” money to DARPA.
In which case, this only really makes sense to get mad at if you find yourself having particular hate for things like “the North Korean economy having slightly more money in it,” or “U.S. sanctions getting bypassed.” Personally, I don’t care about either. The use of stolen identities is awful if true, sure, so I get being mad about that, but that happens plenty enough domestically, so I’m not really sure why it’s particularly deserving of a news article here.
An entire comment based on an incorrect assumption when it is clearly stated that the persons are working for companies run from China and Russia, controlled by North Korea.
North Korea would not allow ordinary civilians to operate (clarification: by this, I mean control) such corporations internationally. If they did, it would be impossible for them to control the land in the way they do, because people would have an outlet, an alternative to escape any mandated way of doing things, in a way which would not have such a high chance of… severe consequence. Like death.
This comment expresses the post is akin to having a hatred for the North Korean economy having a little more money. North Korea doesn’t exactly follow that kind of economy. It relies less on people spending and more on people… working. Any money in the economy is not heavily channeled into civilian investment… like you have in most countries in the world. If it did, it would be impossible in a very absolute sense to have total control over a land to prevent most of the people who want to leave from leaving, setting aside even those who want to leave but cannot leave due to a number of personal circumstances.
Lastly, you could’ve made your two comments in a less aggressive way. You’ve implied an agenda from the poster without elaborating with a satisfactory reason. The article or the poster made no mention of US sanctions, and there is no indication the poster has anything against people from North Korea having money for personal use. The economy statement also relies on the assumption of the running of the North Korean economy from the perspective that it runs as a mostly public investment based economy.
I have already expressed my doubts as to the trustworthiness of the article’s sources regarding the companies in question being controlled by North Korea directly, so I don’t understand why you’d reference the very same article as a justification as to why my suspicions are wrong.
The rest of your post is a lot of stuff that I’ve heard time and time again. Things like “North Korea is a dystopian hellscape where everyone is dying to leave or dying outright” is the kind of thing that I keep seeing people state as though it’s common sense. That is to say, it’s obvious, and needs no further thought or consideration. And the way NK is described, you’d think it was the perfection of totalitarianism, with scarcely any flaws in its population control. I find this level of success a difficult sell. This is all worsened by the fact that the United States has a vested interest in people believing that places like China and NK are basically Mordor. Put them all together, and I’d hope you can see why I might not take this all at face value.
But I’m honestly not interested in debating if North Korea’s really as hellish as so many have said. I think it’s an awful country with an awful, dictatorial government, and whether or not it’s as awful as is claimed is not something I care for. I can’t fix the place.
But I do care for the defaulting assumption of bad faith on my part and repeated uncharitable readings of my posts. I at no point ever made any claims about Tardigrada, nor have I cast any doubt upon their character anywhere in this thread. My criticisms were aimed squarely at the article and the sources it used. Coming back to this thread to see paragraphs written at me and everyone else with a similar opinion to me that do feel like they cast doubt upon my character is not a fun thing to see in my inbox when I come to the site.
Except I gave specific reasons for why your justifications are based on things which aren’t accurate rather than merely citing the article. You don’t have to believe it. You can question it. You, however, disputed it at the start but went on to express, and in a way that is almost entirely but not completely expressive with implication doing the rest, that both the article and the poster had malicious intention. That is not expressing doubt. That is disputing, that is stating that someone was wrong. That itself was done in both a manner which gives no proof, for all your demands of it so far that others prove what they say, that the article or the poster had malicious intention. This would not be required if you expressed genukne doubt and sought more clarification in good faith. Instead, you disputed and attributed malice.
To quote you
You can call it whatever you want and say that is indeed isn’t attributing any implied behaviour to the poster. You replied to the post expressing that the only real possibility of sense to be made is this is driven by having particular hate for an implied not-harmful activity. You expressed such a thing while directly replying to Tardigrada’s post while not mentioning that it wasn’t directed towards Tardigrada.
You also confidently made this claim on the basis that the North Korean economy runs on the primary basis of personal spending done by the civilians in a relatively free region where people are generally allowed to do what they want even with the presence of law, which is the kind of economy where governments would care about the (segments of the) general, non-affiliated with government populations having more money and encourage such situations.
I really do not understand how you would manage to read my posts so poorly. Maybe you need to spend more time cooling off before you start writing, or maybe something’s going on in your life, I don’t know. I do not know you.
Either way, several of the things you mention here were once again huge misinterpretations of me or outright ignore things I’ve said, and it’s clearly not worth it trying to talk to you anymore. I can no longer trust in your interactions being in good faith. Goodbye.
Would you take a YouTuber’s word on it?
I Found North Korean Spies on Discord…