North Korean's 100k fake IT workers net $500M a year for Kim

I’m a little unclear on the usage of the word “fake” here.

Going by article, these are real people doing actual real work, they often use stolen identities to conceal information about themselves, and they get help from outside sources to do their jobs better.

Whatever the right word is, it’s not “fake”. Maybe fraudulent? Or ulterior motives? Or deceptive? Or pretext? Or threat actor? Or foreign agents?

A friend of mine got two such "fake" candidates for a coding interview. His experience reminded me of those "Nigerian Prince" emails from 20 years ago. These two gentlemen had western names (like "Brandon Smith") but Asian features and a tenuous grasp of spoken English; even though they claimed to have undergrad degrees from US universities. And he could tell they were looking at another screen to copy code from. After just a few minutes he realized what was going on, but continued the interview just to get the experience.

North Korea runs like a big organized crime family that specializes in forced labor human trafficking and drugs. I've read that they even operate overseas businesses that send slaves that aren't allowed to leave those businesses such as for timber harvesting in the Russian far east and various businesses in South East Asia.

The Latin American cartels operate almost like miniature North Koreas.

The numbers in the headline seem odd. They imply that each (fake|fraudulent) worker only nets $5000 per year for Kim. I know the system has some inefficiencies where people behind the scenes are helping the "employee" with the work and there are cost of living expenses, taxes etc. but that seems like a pretty low take.

If anyone pays so much money to someone they never met, or _dependable_ know their identity, that seems like a major fail.

The whole idea that someone who couldn't legally enter the US, gets easier clearance than any tourist, or foreign academic with an opinion about the current gov that seems uncomfortable to them baffles me.

Not the first time some priorities seem out of touch with reality.

It's pretty impressive how far American salaries go in other countries. Between thousands of applications, if you manage to snag a single IT role with a larger corp you're potentially getting the local equivalent of dozens of people's regular income.

How are these IT workers fake? Sounds like they are really doing the job.

But are only North Koreans fake?

I got an offer to "lend" my resume/identity to an upwork profile for a couple hundred per ... week iirc. Or was it month?

It could have been NK but it could have also been any other country where that makes financial sense. Or someone running a bunch of "AI"s.

old article but still relevant. some things don't change

Genuinely baffled by the logistics of this. The article makes it sound like these are large numbers of people in NK or surrounding countries who rely on Google translate, so not sophisticated spies or whatever.

Even if they get their hands on a fake American ID, these are taxable, insured jobs, they're not working at a restaurant under the table. IT companies ship out hardware, where are these people banked etc?

How does this practically look, officially you're working with Mark Johnson but you end up on a zoom call with a guy who speaks broken English and connects from the other part of the world and you're not suspicious?

So $5,000 per? That's nothing at all. They could make a lot more by doing other things.

Camera cuts to a tech bro at his desk with 3 jobs and 5 instances of Claude Code running:

> I had [the Register] explain to me three times what [Kim] got arrested for because it sounds an awful lot like what I do here every day.

How is it that corporations can't get their act together wrt sensible hiring of remote workers? Before giving someone a final offer letter, why is it so difficult to meet them once (somewhere outside of North Korea and China)? The cost is negligible compared to a large salary.

What corporations actually do for verification also is equally damning. They ask for references, which no coworker really has an obligation to give, and it comes in the way of independent thought. Meanwhile, those from North Korea will sail through this blocker by having their fellow countrymen serve as references.

It's evident starting in 2017-2018 with the surge of the price of crypto and the rise of WFH with COVID, North Korea pivoted from rockets to much more lucrative and safer cyber theft to enrich its leadership and attack the West. A success. Policy makers don't care.

I'm so tired of this intellectually dishonest phrasing of making everything about "controversial" individuals whenever they're perceived as being the current villain, whether that's Putin, Elon, Kim or whatever.

Just terrible writing.

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Actual atomic weapons not just stockpile, hundreds stave to death there daily, and everyone knows the famous satellite view of the entire country in darkness at night (while his palace is lit)

Yet no oil so they will be one of the longest surviving tyrannies in history

We can bet every country like them now will be building massive war drone factories too