Another warning about tech workers from North Korea, this time – from Japan

Japan has issued a warning to companies about IT workers from North Korea posing as Japanese to fund Pyongyang's ballistic missile and nuclear weapons development programs.

“Regarding our country, there are suspicions that North Korean IT workers are posing as Japanese individuals and using online platforms provided by Japanese companies to secure business contracts and earn income,” a a machine translation of a press release by the National Police Agency reads.

What’s more, the country’s officials are concerned about the “involvement of North Korean IT workers in malicious cyber activities, such as information theft.”

It’s hardly a surprise that North Korea is dispatching tech talent abroad to earn cash for Pyongyang's regime, which is essentially cut off from international monetary funds.

"The DPRK dispatches thousands of highly skilled IT workers around the world to generate revenue that contributes to its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, in violation of US and United Nations (UN) sanctions," the US Department of State, the US Department of the Treasury, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) advisory from 2022 reads.

Last year, the FBI seized 17 websites used by highly skilled tech workers from North Korea to disguise their identity in order to land a job with the US companies.

As per the Japan Times, on March 6th, the president of an IT company in Japan was arrested, and police are looking into the possibility that he was offering work to a North Korean national.