least 2014, highlighting the increasingly sophisticated and undeterred cyberactivities of North Korea since Kim Jong Un came to power.
But a study by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in October 2018 struck a more worrisome note. It stated that North Korea has the potential to weaken and disrupt the national security infrastructure of the United States and South Korea, pointing to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and FBI joint alert warning that North Korean entities were targeting the aerospace, telecommunications, and finance industries. Furthermore, in December 2017, the United States announced that North Korea was responsible for the WannaCry computer worm that affected 230,000 computers in more than 150 countries, costing billions of dollars. The White House homeland security adviser Thomas P. Bossert said the WannaCry attack was “a defining moment” and that “North Korea has demonstrated that they want to hold the entire world at risk, whether it be through its nuclear program or cyberattacks.” Kim’s hackers are undeterred. As detailed in an August 2019 U.N. report, they have become more sophisticated in their manipulation of cyberspace, successfully launching attacks on financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges to generate an estimated $2 billion to date.
The Interview was supposed to be funny at Kim Jong Un’s expense. But, as it turned out, the joke was on us.
KIM’S SILICON VALLEY
Kim’s cyberwarriors and their hit-and-run tactics are indicative of the regime’s intent to wreak havoc and instill fear even outside North Korea, but Kim has been equally focused on developing technologies within the country, even at the risk of unsanctioned information penetrating the people’s consciousness and laying bare the contradictions and falsehoods of state propaganda. Like a tech entrepreneur with all of the nation’s wealth at his disposal, Kim has allowed his people, not just in Pyongyang but also in the provinces, broader access to the accoutrements of digital life that he can control, including laptops, tablets, and cell phones, but without access to what he can’t control, namely the Internet. And as a dictator, he has also sought to nudge the populace onto digital networks to better limit how the North Korean people consume information—in effect, using technology and its access to strengthen his rule and amplify North Korean propaganda.
Kim has created an attractive environment for the tech elite, devoting regime resources to reward and incentivize scientists and engineers. One of the perks is the Mirae Scientists Street, a neighborhood for North Korea’s Silicon Valley, located in a highly coveted area near the Pyongyang train station and adjacent to the Taedong River on a six-lane avenue. The residential project is punctuated by a fifty-three-story skyscraper topped with a “golden” orb as if to serve as a beacon for North Korea’s aspiring techies and as a marker of their esteemed place in Kim’s modern North Korea. It has a daycare center, school, stores, sports parks, and other amenities, not only to keep the workers and their families happy but also to inspire future generations to value their privilege in this society. Nat Kretchun, an expert on technology trends in North Korea, has argued that the regime’s conscious cultivation of this population of scientists and engineers is designed to harness their skills in order to prevent the development of a domestic “hacker culture” in which they would have more incentive to undermine digital controls than to reinforce them.
In January 2016, just months after the regime celebrated the completion of Mirae Scientists Street, the North Korean government unveiled the Sci-Tech Complex to further demonstrate the high priority it places on scientific expertise. The complex is a high-tech park designed in the shape of an atom, perhaps as a poke in the eye to the United States, as it watches via satellite images of this brazen advertisement for North Korea’s commitment to nuclear weapons and other technological developments. Inside, employees work diligently at computers connected to the North Korean intranet, as described by a CNN reporter who visited the facility. Enticed by inducements such as department store discounts, better housing, more food, exemptions from mandatory military service, and elevated status, parents are clamoring to get their children into the sciences, according to North Korean sources who were interviewed by Radio Free Asia in 2017. One source said that private tutors who teach math, physics, and science are earning the most money.
Kim’s embrace of modern technology—and even American products—has filtered down to the elites, who can afford the luxury of digital connectedness. Regime propaganda regularly features Kim with cell phones, computers, and laptops,