Korea was a land of prosperity hit too close to home. Maybe the insinuations that Kim was effete were too insulting, or acknowledging that there were factions within North Korea that were intent on unmasking the hypocrisy of the existing regime and determined to foment a coup was too dangerous. Beyond the personal insult to Kim, the film had the potential to reach millions of North Koreans who were already smuggling in banned DVDs of South Korean TV dramas and films, given the increasingly porous borders and the people’s insatiable appetite for these types of entertainment.
Paul Fischer, the author of A Kim Jong-Il Production, noted that the 2013 movie Olympus Has Fallen had not elicited Kim’s fury, probably because it was about North Korean commandos attacking the White House—Kim “had no problem being portrayed as rogue, dangerous, or aggressive. But funny…that’s taking it too far.” However, a story about the removal of Kim and the potential for a new government led by the North Korean people probably gave the regime good reason to worry. Perhaps they even read about the South Korean activist who wanted to use balloons to carry one hundred thousand copies of the movie on DVDs and USBs across the border in the belief that “North Korea’s absolute leadership will crumble if the idolization of leader Kim breaks down.” Jang Jin-sung, one of the North’s most prominent propagandists and a member of Kim Jong Il’s inner circle, due in part to his skill in nurturing the cult of personality, and who defected in 2004, said that “from the North Korean’s point of view, [the movie is] as explosive as if a real bomb were dropped on Kim Jong-un. It’s a cultural bomb….It’s so shocking. It’s beyond-the-pale blasphemous.”
The Sony attack demonstrated the twenty-first-century capability of a twenty-first-century millennial dictator who also happens to be thin-skinned. Not only is Kim comfortable with technology in the form of cell phones and laptops, but in the media he is also shown speaking earnestly with nuclear scientists and overseeing scores of missile tests, flying his own plane, providing guidance to the crew as he boards a submarine, and driving a tank. During their visit to Beijing in March 2018, Kim and his wife reportedly experienced a virtual reality demonstration and admired the latest technology shown to them by their Chinese hosts. Kim is a “digital native,” the term coined by the author Marc Prensky to describe the generation that is defined by the technological culture in which they grew up. And it’s apparent that Kim has fully embraced science and technology as part of his brand and a key component of his tool kit of coercion. Cyberattacks have the added benefit of ambiguity, since attribution takes a great deal of forensic work, creating plausible deniability for the regime that perpetrates these strikes.
It appears that Kim is determined to move beyond the development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles by using North Korea’s cyber capabilities to advance his goals. He is also looking to further establish his brand as a modern warrior by cultivating a generation of cyber guerrillas, to manipulate the environment through coercive means, regardless of geographic borders.
THE SONY HACK
Around Thanksgiving 2014, about two weeks before The Interview’s red-carpet December 11 U.S. premiere, Sony Pictures Entertainment employees logged in to their computers to find this message:
We’ve already warned you, and this is just a beginning. We continue till our request be met….We’ve obtained all your internal data including your secrets and top secrets. If you don’t obey us, we’ll release data shown below to the world.
It was accompanied by a glowing red skeleton and signed “Hacked by #GOP,” or Guardians of Peace. At first, Sony employees were nonplussed. One person said, “It felt like getting hacked in the early ’90s….The message looked like something out of Hackers, the movie….It was a throwback. Almost cute.” In the days that followed, speculation about who was behind the Sony hack ranged from Russia to hacktivists to disgruntled Sony insiders. North Korea as the culprit was at the bottom of the list, even though in June of that year, when the movie trailer was shown, its Foreign Ministry spokesman threatened “merciless” retaliation if the film about an assassination attempt against Kim Jong Un was released. The state media quoted the spokesman as saying, “Making and releasing a movie on a plot to hurt our top-level leadership is the most blatant act of terrorism and will absolutely not be tolerated.” He added that