The hackers stole more cryptocurrency in one attack than all the funds stolen by North Korean cyber criminals in 2024, when the rogue state’s cyber attackers made off with around $1.3bn in digital coins, according to cryptocurrency analysts Chainalysis.
I’m no apologist for NK, but this sentence is glaringly missing a nod to Western sanctions that caused the failing economy. It’s mentioned some paragraphs later, but I can’t not notice the subtle propaganda.
Are you implying that we should be openly trading with NK and funding their government? Seriously?
Fish that bites its own tail. North Korea is weird as it is because of the isolation imposed on it after the country was quite literally levelled by US bombings. That’s the historical and materialist events that gave rise to “juche” ideology in the way North Korea understands it now. I think you’d be pretty scared of outsiders if your country had been as close to literally entirely destroyed as it gets by foreign bombing, and if when you tried to rebuild your economy you had been subjected to an almost complete economic blockade.
No, I’m saying that not acknowledging that sanctions caused the economy to fail is intended to make readers think that it failed because of Communism rather than being blocked from trade with most of the world.
While I understand and would agree except…
For 40+ years there was a reliable cycle. Every few years NK would crash into famine. Multiple countries would send aid. NK would immediately turn around and trade most of it to China for weapons.