North Korea sent me abroad to be a secret IT worker. My wages funded the regime

Jin-Su said that he used hundreds of fake identities to apply for remote work with Western companies over the years. It was part of a wide secret plan to collect funds for North Korea.

In a rare interview, in a statement to the BBC, the juggling of more than one job in the US and Europe would make it at least $ 5,000 (£ 3,750) a month. He said that some of his colleagues would win much more.

Before the escape, Jin -water, whose name was changed to protect his identity, joined the shaded operation carried out by secret North Korea, one of the thousands of thousands of people believed to have been sent abroad to China and Russia and other countries.

North Korean IT workers were closely watched and very few spoke with the media, but Jin-SU gave a comprehensive testimony to the BBC and gave an explanatory idea of what everyday life resembled and how they work. The first -hand account confirms most of those estimated in the UN and cyber security reports.

He said that 85% of what he won was sent back to finance the regime. North Korea, which has a shortage of cash, has been under international sanctions for years.

“We know it’s like a robbery, but we just accept it as our destiny,” Jin-Su said, “much better than we’re in North Korea.”

According to a UN Security Council report published in March 2024, secret IT workers produce $ 250 million annually for North Korea. When remote work became widespread, the authorities and cyber defenders warned.

Most workers are in pursuit of a stable salary check to send back to the regime, but in some cases they stole the data or hacked their employers and demanded a ransom.

Last year, US Court 14 North Korean Allegedly, for a period of six years, US companies won $ 88 million by disguising and forcibly removing.

The four North Korean, allegedly used fraudulent identities to secure the remote control for a crypto currency company in the USA, were accused of last month.

Jin-Su was a CT worker for the regime in China for several years before the flaw. He and his colleagues will mostly work in teams of 10 people, he said.

Access to the Internet is limited in North Korea, but abroad, these IT workers can work more easily. Not only because they can get more payment by imitating Westerners, but also North Korea must first conceal their nationalities due to comprehensive international sanctions in response to nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

This plan is separate from North Korea’s hack operations that collect money for the regime. Earlier this year, the Lazarus Group – a fame hacking group realized that it was working for North Korea, but they never accepted it – It is thought to play $ 1.5 billion ($ 1.1 billion) from the crypto currency company Bybit..

Jin-Su spent most of his time trying to secure the fraudulent identities he could use to apply for a job. In his statement to the BBC, he would first pose as a Chinese and contact people to use their identities with people in Türkiye and other countries.

“If you put a ‘Asian face’ in this profile, you will never find a job.”

Later, he would use these borrowed identities to approach people in Western Europe for the identities he would use to resort to the US and Europe. Jin-water usually had success in targeting England citizens.

“In a chat, people in the UK have passed their identities very easily,” he said.

Better English -speaking workers sometimes manage the process of applications. However, jobs on free employees do not require face -to -face negotiations, and usually daily interactions take place on platforms like Slack and make it easier to behave like you are not.

Jin-SU told BBC that he often aimed at the US market, because “salaries in American companies are higher”. He claimed that too many IT workers found a job, and companies would often hire more than one North Korean without realizing it. “A lot is happening,” he said.

It is understood that IT workers collect their earnings through Western and Chinese -based facilitating networks. Last week, a US woman was sentenced to more than eight years of imprisonment North Korean assistance for crimes are found to find jobs and send money.

BBC cannot independently confirm the characteristics of Jin-Su’s expression, but PSCOREAn organization defending North Korea human rights, we read a testimony from another IT worker supporting Jin-Su’s claims.

The BBC also spoke with Hyun-Seung Lee, a different defector who met North Koreans working as a businessman for the regime in China. He confirmed that he had similar experiences.

In the cyber security and software development sector, the BBC said with many recruitment managers who said that they saw dozens of candidates who suspected that they were North Korean IT workers during recruitment processes.

Rob Henley, the founding partner of Ally Security in the United States, recently hired a series of remote gaps in its company for a series of remote gaps and believes that she interviewed North Korean IT workers in the process. “At the beginning, it was like a game to some extent, trying to understand who was real and who was fake, but it was quite frustrating.” He said.

Finally, he resorted to asking for video talks to the candidates and to show him that they were daytime.

“For these positions, we only hired candidates from the United States. At least it should be light outside. But I never saw the daylight.”

In March, Dawid Moczadło, the founding partner of Poland -based Vidoc Security Lab, shared a video of a distant job interview, where the candidate seems to use artificial intelligence software to hide his faces. After talking to the experts, he said he believed that the candidate could be a North Korean CT worker.

In order to put the allegations in this story to them, we contacted the Embassy of North Korea in London. They didn’t answer.

North Korea has been sending workers abroad for decades to win state foreign currencies. Mostly, it is employed up to 100,000 as a factory or restaurant worker in China and Russia.

After a few years in China, Jin-water said “a sense of imprisonment” on repressive working conditions.

“We weren’t allowed to go out and we always had to stay inside,” he said. “You can’t exercise, you can’t do what you want.”

However, North Korean IT workers said that when they were abroad, they have the freedom to access Western media. “You see the real world. When abroad, we understand that something is wrong in North Korea.”

However, Jin-water claimed that he was thinking of escaping as a small number of North Korean IT workers did.

“They just take the money and return home, very few people would think of defect.”

Although they only hold a small part of what they have won, it is very worthy of North Korea. Perfect is also very risky and difficult. The surveillance in China means that most of them are caught. A few people who have managed to defect may never see their families again and face their relatives for separation.

Jin-Su is still working on. He says that the skills he works for the regime help to settle in his new life.

Since there is no work with fake identities, he earns less than he works for the North Korean regime. But since it can keep more than earnings, it generally has more money in its own pocket.

“I was used to making money by doing illegal things. But now I work hard and I earn the money I deserve.”