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Category: Terrorism (NK)

May 13, 2020

OFAC’s new North Korea (sort of) designations

Today, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control published a colossal list of amendments to the North Korea designations on its list of Specially Designated Nationals—its sanctions blacklist for the financial industry. The amendments are requirements under the new Otto Warmbier North Korea Nuclear Sanctions and Enforcement Act, the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, and the regulations promulgated under those authorities. Today’s announcement is an encouraging sign that the administration is feeling more pressure to enforce these...

Categories Cyberwar/Money Laundering/Sanctions/Shipping sanctions
March 2, 2020

DOJ indicts 2 Chinese men for laundering stolen South Korean Bitcoin for North Korean hackers

Today, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia unsealed an indictment of two Chinese nationals, Tian Yinyin and Li Jiadong, charging them with money laundering and running an unlicensed money transmitting business, for laundering $100 million in stolen Bitcoin and Ether for North Korean hackers between July 2018 and April 2019. The indictment alleges that the $100 million was part of a $250 million take the Lazarus Group stole from four cryptocurrency exchanges, three of them in South...

Categories Cyberwar/Money Laundering/U.S. Law
April 27, 2018

The Warmbiers sue North Korea

WHILE THE WORLD IS AGOG AT THE SIGHT OF KIM JONG-UN’S impersonation of a human being, Fred and Cindy Warmbier wish to remind you of his true character by sharing with you what their son—or what was left of him—was like when he came home from North Korea. Yesterday, they filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the North Korean government for the wrongful death of Otto Warmbier. I downloaded the complaint from PACER. Warmber...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
November 21, 2017

Most journalists still have no clue why Trump listed N. Korea as sponsor of terrorism yesterday

Yes, the news coverage of President Trump’s decision to put North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism was lazy and terible, but not in the ways I expected it to be. .@POTUS: Today, the United States is designating #NorthKorea as a state sponsor of terrorism. pic.twitter.com/ElRsoYJv0V – Department of State (@StateDept) November 20, 2017 So far, thankfully, I’ve read relatively little of the junk analysis I expected denying the extensive evidence of Pyongyang’s sponsorship of terrorism,...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
November 13, 2017

The Kim Jong-nam assassination was meant to terrorize, not just eliminate

As the reports suggest that the Trump administration is about to put Pyongyang back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism — from which it should never have been removed to begin with — I’m seeing some strained arguments in opposition. Sorry but serious misconception here: terrorists aim at fostering terror among definite social groups by randomly striking members of the group, not targeted assassination. The Rangoon bombing was no terrorism either — Théo Clément (@ThCl_China) November 13, 2017...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
November 6, 2017

Why Trump’s itinerary in Japan hints at re-listing N. Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism

Last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson missed a statutory deadline to decide whether to re-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism (SSOT). Asked about this, State said it told members of Congress that Tillerson “expects to conclude his review and announce a decision within the month.” The Washington Times claims that “[t]here were rumors this week in the back hallways of the State Department that the administration was weighing a state sponsor designation.” National Security Advisor H.R....

Categories Abductions/Japan/Terrorism (NK)
October 30, 2017

North Korean assassins arrested in Beijing as Tillerson’s terror sponsor decision looms

If you haven’t read my last post on this week’s deadline for the Secretary of State to decide whether North Korea has repeatedly sponsored acts of international terrorism, you may want to start there. This post will be a combination of breaking news and supplement to that post. This morning, Bloomberg News, citing a report in the Joongang Ilbo, is reporting that yet again, North Korean agents have been caught while on their way to assassinate a dissident in exile....

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
October 25, 2017

Congress to Tillerson: Put North Korea back on the list of sponsors of terrorism

I won’t belabor the point of why North Korea should be on the list (well, maybe just a little). The better question is why, eight months, a nuclear test, two U.N. Security Council resolutions, and one public WMD-enabled assassination after Donald Trump’s inauguration, it isn’t already on that list. One growing line of speculation is that Tillerson, for all his unpopularity at Foggy Bottom, has gone native there. This sentiment comes from thoughtful and influential conservative members of Congress, not...

Categories Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
October 18, 2017

Computer crime, bank fraud & money laundering: A preview of Kim Jong-un’s indictment

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that hackers employed by the government of North Korea have been implicated in yet another international bank fraud scheme using . This time, the victim is a bank in Taiwan, and the take was $60 million, all of it laundered through accounts in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and the United States. In a blog post Tuesday, cybersecurity researchers at U.K. defense company BAE Systems PLC also implicated Lazarus in the Taiwanese theft, saying that tools...

Categories Cyberwar/U.S. Law
September 5, 2017

Kim Jong-Un’s Moonshadow Policy is eclipsing free thought in S. Korea, and beyond

As we begin rehashing the time-worn policy arguments about responding to a nuclear North Korea, it’s useful to inform those arguments with further evidence of just how Pyongyang is leveraging its nuclear hegemony, by escalating its control over speech in South Korea. Last week, a few of us noticed that KCNA published a “death sentence” against four journalists (two reviewers and two newspaper presidents) over a review of “North Korea Confidential” by James Pearson and Daniel Tudor, asserting further that...

Categories Books & Films/Censorship/Korean War II/Media Criticism/Terrorism (NK)
July 19, 2017

The silver lining in State’s 2016 terrorism report: at least they quit lying to us

The State Department published its 2016 Country Reports on Terrorism today, and contrary to the evidence, the law, and my predictions, Secretary Tillerson did not re-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. I won’t repeat all of the reasons why I believe that this was the wrong decision; you can read the blog post here, or the 100-page, peer-reviewed report here. If I wrote an update to the longer version — and perhaps State’s report is a reason to...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
June 29, 2017

N. Korea just threatened to kill S. Korea’s ex-president & any of its critics anywhere

Here at OFK, we collect small bits of North Korea trivia, such as the fact that President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, and the related fact that the State Department’s official position is that North Korea has not sponsored acts of terrorism since 1987. Discuss among yourselves. In other news, the official North Korean “news ” agency, KCNA, has just published a call by the North Korean government for the...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
May 8, 2017

The PUST hostage crisis is a fitting symbol of the futility of engaging Pyongyang

Just one week after I predicted that the misbegotten experiment known as the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology would soon be at the center of a hostage crisis, the inevitable has happened. North Korean state media reports the country has detained a U.S. citizen – the fourth U.S. citizen being held there amid rising tensions between the two countries. The official Korean Central News Agency identifies the man detained Saturday as Kim Hak Song, an employee of Pyongyang University...

Categories Engagement/Foreigners in N. Korea/Sunshine/Terrorism (NK)
April 24, 2017

To prevent a larger hostage crisis, shut PUST down now — all of it.

The news that North Korea arrested its third American hostage over the weekend ought to change the shape of our discussion about PUST, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. Kim Sang-duk, a U.S. citizen and professor at the Yanbian University of Science and Technology (YUST) in Yanji, China, was detained in North Korea on Saturday at Pyongyang’s Sunan airport, a source familiar with the case confirmed to NK News on Sunday. Chan-Mo Park, current chancellor of the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology...

Categories Appeasement/Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)
March 23, 2017

WSJ: Feds may indict North Koreans in Bangladesh Bank fraud

This story just gets more interesting by the day: Federal prosecutors are building cases that would accuse North Korea of directing one of the biggest bank robberies of modern times, the theft of $81 million from Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last year, according to people familiar with the matter. The charges, if filed, would target alleged Chinese middlemen who prosecutors believe helped North Korea orchestrate the theft, the people said. The current cases being pursued...

Categories Cyberwar/NK Crime/U.S. Law
March 22, 2017

Top NSA official attributes attempted $1B bank heist to North Korean hackers

The story of the Bangladesh Bank/SWIFT heist has gotten much more interesting of late. Now, not only do we have a senior U.S. intelligence official attributing it to a government, we learn that the North Koreans tried to steal nearly …. A senior National Security Agency official appeared to confirm that North Korean computer hackers were behind a multi-million dollar heist targeting Bangladesh’s central bank last year. Computer hackers attempted to steal $951 million, but only got away with $81...

Categories Cyberwar/NK Crime/Terrorism (NK)
March 20, 2017

Ted Cruz introduces Senate bill to re-list N. Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism

Ted Cruz, who has emerged as a leading advocate for a harder line against North Korea, has introduced a Senate companion bill to Rep. Ted Poe’s bill, calling for North Korea’s re-listing as a state sponsor of terrorism. According to a press release from Senator Cruz’s office,* Cruz’s bill has six original co-sponsors: Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Marco Rubio (R-Fl.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). Compared to the House bill, the Senate...

Categories Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law/U.S. Politics
March 16, 2017

N. Korea, Lazarus & SWIFT: Are the white hats closing in? (Update: SWIFT cuts off remaining N. Korean banks)

In the last month, major news stories about North Korea have bombarded my batting cage faster than I’ve been able to swing at them. I’d wondered when I’d have a chance to cover Katy Burne’s detailed story in the Wall Street Journal about the empty half of the SWIFT glass – that despite its recent decision to disconnect three U.N.-designated North Korean banks, it’s still messaging for banks that are sanctioned by the Treasury Department, but not by the U.N.:...

Categories Cyberwar/Money Laundering/NK Crime/U.S. Law