SEOUL: North Korea is circumventing UN sanctions by using cryptocurrency to trade raw materials and military weaponry, and by deploying large numbers of IT workers abroad to launder funds and generate income for Pyongyang, an international sanctions monitoring group reported.

Under leader Kim Jong Un, Pyongyang has ramped up cyber operations in recent years, turning hacking into a key source of foreign currency in the face of biting sanctions over its nuclear and weapons programmes.

The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) found that North Korea’s sophisticated cyber force had stolen at least $1.65 billion from January to September 2025, including $1.4 billion from crypto exchange Bybit in February.

That was in addition to North Korea’s ill-gotten cryptocurrency gains of $1.2 billion in 2024, the monitoring group said in a report. Pyongyang funnels the funds into “the unlawful development of its WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and ballistic missile programmes”, it said.

The report’s authors found that North Korean officials used a type of cryptocurrency called stablecoin “for procurement-related transactions, including the sale and transfer of military equipment and raw materials such as copper, which is used in munitions production”.

The country further evaded UN sanctions by sending IT workers to at least eight countries. Most went to China, but others were dispatched to Russia, Laos, Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Nigeria and Tanzania. MSMT also found that North Korea was planning to send “40,000 labourers to Russia, including several delegations of IT workers”.

Under UN sanctions, North Korean workers are prohibited from earning money abroad. North Korea has secured crucial backing from Russia in recent years, after sending weapons and thousands of North Korean troops to fight alongside Moscow’s forces against Ukraine.

The MSMT also cited a 2024 report by 38 North, a specialist analysis programme run by the Stimson Centre think tank, stating that North Korean IT workers — hiding their nationalities — secured contracts to work on animation projects that were being steered by Japanese and US companies like Amazon and HBO Max.

An Amazon spokesperson stressed that the company had never hired any such workers directly. “We had previously worked with an animation studio that hired sub-contractors who were allegedly involved in the scheme; however they were not Amazon employees and didn’t have access to internal systems,” the spokesperson said.

The report said the North Korean animators also worked for companies such as Pyongyang’s state-owned animation studio SEK — previously reported to have assisted in Western projects such as 2007’s “The Simpsons Movie”.

Seoul’s intelligence agency last year said North Korean operatives had used LinkedIn to pose as recruiters and approach South Koreans working at defence firms to obtain information on their technologies.

The MSMT, launched last October, monitors and reports violations of UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea, though it operates independently of the UN. It comprises Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, the UK and the United States.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2025