Computer mayhem in the two Koreas

North Korea’s gotten caught again in a scheme to raise hard currency. This time, it’s not illegal sales of ginseng or narcotics, but computer games, South Korean authorities claim.
In fact they’ve in custody five of their citizens who ‘colluded’ with the ‘enemy’ by violating copyright and draining capital away from ROK and corporate treasuries, to the tune of us$3 billion.
Three billion dollars ain’t hay. It is good to recall that not too many years ago, South Korea itself flouted international copyrights by flooding the market with knock offs in computer games, books, films, luxury items, and the like.
Now the ‘respectable’ ROK is pursuing its political aim with the US to ‘roll back’ North Korea to the point of collapse by tightening the DPRK ability to earn foreign currency.
US and South Korean and western propaganda and media tend to belittle North Korea: the country is on the verge of collapse, starvation, closed off from the world, Pyongyang remains technologically backwards and years behind in information technology and advances in science, so on and on.
This steady stream of misinformation flies in the face of realty. John Maynard Keynes famously said: ‘when the facts change, I change my mind’. North Korea is at the cutting edge of rocket technology; it has developed a nuclear programme; and now, we see in the South’s charge of computer hacking and theft, it has caught up quickly in website design and programming.
Of course, it is not happenstance that South Korea has often accused the North of cyber warfare on its banks and government institutions, despite when on investigation the trail leads back to South Korea itself, the US, and the European Union.
GuamDiary cannot gainsay that the DPRK is strapped for hard cash. The US led sanction campaign has proven successful, even though North Korea manages to wiggle room to raise hard currency through trade and barter abroad. Nor can you deny that proud DPRK has the right to defend its independence and identity faced with a relentless cold war conducted against it by the US and its allies.
Little wonder, North Korea seizes any open window of opportunity to fill its coffers. Nonetheless adversity has to North Koreans validated the country’s ‘Cholima’ spirit and reinforced the notion of ‘Juche’, which the scholarly, business, and diplomatic community in the US, South Korea, and elsewhere try to denigrate.
And yet, North Korea never ceases to surprise its detractors, who complicate reality by necessarily drawing false conclusions rather than taking the obvious path of talking with North Korea. The simplicity of this suggestion encourages apoplexy instead of intelligence in diplomatic and business and scholarly circles.