Speaker 1: Welcome to Spycraft, a podcast that tells gripping life and
Speaker 1: death spy stories and the amazing devices and operations that
Speaker 1: made them possible. Now let's get started.
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Speaker 4: Today, we're going to go look at Room thirty nine.
Speaker 4: What is this all about? Well? North Korea has long
Speaker 4: relied on unconventional means to sustain its isolated economy and
Speaker 4: fund its nuclear ambitions, but recent intelligence reveals the extent
Speaker 4: to which it operates more like a transnational crime synd
Speaker 4: the kid than a conventional state. At the heart of
Speaker 4: this co root apparatus is Room thirty nine, a secretive
Speaker 4: government bureau responsible for generating hard currency through illicted activities.
Speaker 4: Analysts now compare North Korea's state run operations to the
Speaker 4: structure and methods of organized crime groups such as the mafia.
Speaker 4: Room thirty nine, officially known as a Central Committee Bureau
Speaker 4: thirty nine of the Workers Party of Korea, plays a
Speaker 4: pivotal role in managing North Korea's shadow economy. It allegedly
Speaker 4: involved in a wide ray of criminal enterprises, including counterfeiting
Speaker 4: foreign currency, producing arcotics, perpetrating insurance fraud, and more recently,
Speaker 4: coordinating international cybercrime and labor exploitation. The schemes are not
Speaker 4: only are not only about survival, they also ensure the
Speaker 4: funding of the regimes elite in its strategic programs, including
Speaker 4: nuclear weapons. One of the most significant aspects of the
Speaker 4: system is the deployment of highly trained North Korean IT
Speaker 4: workers abroad. These individuals operated under false identities, using forged
Speaker 4: documents to gain employment in foreign tech companies. Once embedded,
Speaker 4: they're expected to send a large portion of the rages
Speaker 4: back to the regime. This not only constitutes a severe
Speaker 4: violation obviously of international label laws, but also allows the
Speaker 4: regime to embed sleeper agents within the digital infrastructure of
Speaker 4: unsuspecting businesses around the world. Cybercrime is become a particularly
Speaker 4: profitable and dangerous component of the strategy. North Korea operatives
Speaker 4: are believed to have carried out sophisticated cyber attacks and
Speaker 4: still a vast amount of cryptocurrency, funneling millions of dollars
Speaker 4: back into the country. These operations mirror the structure of
Speaker 4: mafia organizations, where layers of deniability, compartmentalization, and loyalty are
Speaker 4: designed to evade international detection. The scale and organization of
Speaker 4: North Korea's overseas IT and I SAY cyber operations show
Speaker 4: how traditional state craft is being replaced by illicit enterprise.
Speaker 4: Workers are reportedly subjected to intense ideological indoctrination before being
Speaker 4: sent abroad, where they are monitored by handlers and kept
Speaker 4: under constant pressure to deliver financially. Their compliances enforced through
Speaker 4: threats to their families back home. It's showing loyalty despite
Speaker 4: international sanctions and diplomatic pressure nor continued. North Korea continues
Speaker 4: to adapt and uses shell companies, laundering networks, and unregulated
Speaker 4: crypto markets to move money concealed digital fingerprints. Experts warned
Speaker 4: that combating these threats will require unprecedented global cooperation. Sanctions
Speaker 4: alone are obviously not enough. Enhanced cybersecurity protocols will be needed,
Speaker 4: Financial intelligence sharing and strict labor verification processes are going
Speaker 4: to be vital. So I hope most companies are listening
Speaker 4: to this because as long as PON can exploit the
Speaker 4: blurred lines between state operations and criminal enterprise, it will
Speaker 4: continue to pose a unique, complex threat ul security