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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These people didn’t work to earn money their families, they worked for the regime using stolen identities. North Koreans are not even allowed to get in touch with companies (or individuals) in the West, let alone work for them.
… and yet, North Koreans did this work, and I addressed the money issue from the regime-level down.
Stealing Identities to get work does not imply the ruined the credit of those people. Getting worked up over this is NOT all that far off from getting worked up over immigrant laborers stealing identities so they can work and feed their families, or recieve food stamps or medical care. At least those last two kinda-sorta have victims, and yet I still prefer immigrants be able to eat.
Sorry, you’re not going to be able to get me to buy into the fear-mongering hysteria-machine by apeing thier narratives. I’m not saying your arguments are invalid, just addressing them from the same surface-level reading you gave mine.
These people didn’t work to ‘feed their families’. Their families likely didn’t benefit at all from this scheme.
How do you know?
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I know of nothing whatsoever that proves this. The article certainly doesn’t clarify anything to that effect.
It was four words, without any emphasis. I deliberately wrote my comment to be simple and calm. Any aggression you’ve interpreted is on you, not me, and I suspect you only read it that way due a to a pre-existing negative opinion of me.
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Repeating the same tired gibberish with no elaboration, much?
These aren’t ‘common’ IT workers seeking a job but spies working for North Korea as the article says. What should I elaborate here?
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Rather spies, soldiers, whatever, work remotely for western companies than whatever other bull their government wants them doing.
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… and? Yeah, welcome to the thread. At what point do I say otherwise?
Starving the regime is not an excuse to starve the country. The regime doing anything that brings in more money than it spends is a better use of its time than other things it tries to do, and will continue attempting regardless of cash-flow.
Call me when you’re ready to impiment a no-fly zone and mass air-dropping/smuggling of Starlink, Cell Phones, Cell Towers(stand-alone, like the Stinger, only in reverse), weapons, and most importantly, food.
Are you ready to do something about the problem of starving North Koreans, or do we just continue blaming it entirely on their government?
… yeah, that will show them. Meanwhile, do you even begin to understand how food is distributed within North Korea?
India and Pakistan, circa 1998 … You’re telling us the world ended because we didn’t starve them all out.
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.
Given that in North Korea military jobs are the most stable ways to provide for your family, I’d say both are likely true.
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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”.
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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.
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I attempted to DM you, but Lemmy is not allowing this. I did not want this public, and I scanned that wall of text and understand you’re suffering. This is an incorrect forum to talk about this. Chat is the right place.
But here’s what follows, which is admin approved:
Reporting everything you disagree with has gotten old. You’ve been here for less than a month and account for the vast majority of reports I’ve received since the community was created in mid-2023. If you don’t like what’s going on, disengage. I’m not here to tell others to back off every time you don’t like what they have to say. You are abusing the reporting system.
You clearly see bad faith in everything stated in this thread, when the ethos of Beehaw is to assume good faith. And crossed the line several exits back into harassing mods. That’s not a great look. Consider this a warning that if you cannot handle an online discussion, perhaps stop visiting the thread.
I welcome and encourage you to continue participating here, but dealing with everyone who responds to you is not my role. I’m not entirely certain why you are so worked up over North Korean spies; if you have a valid reason, please share it by responding inline, not reporting everything. As it stands, you seem to have an axe to grind, which can be done somewhere else.
I’ve seen you present thoughtful, cogent, relevant responses elsewhere here, so this is honestly baffling. I’m not going to cast aspersions, nor am I taking any action at this time, but you’ve had plenty of opportunity to show you know when to simply stop responding to others, and you’ve not chosen that route. I would suggest a different approach.