Posted on 06/20/2011 8:22:09 PM PDT by Bad~Rodeo
A child becomes computer literate at primary school. Meanwhile, North Korea's most prodigious young students are identified and trained in advanced cyberwarfare techniques
As South Korea blames North Korea for a recent slew of cyberattacks, two defectors share their experiences, as a hacker and trainer of "cyberwarriors" in the reclusive communist country, with Al Jazeera shedding some light into the inner workings of the North's cyberwarfare programme.
In the process, Kim Heung-kwang and Jang Se-yul also warn of the regime's concentrated efforts to bolster its cyberwarfare capabilities.
The hackers' professor
Kim Heung-kwang was a computer science professor in North Korea. Kim graduated from the Kim Chaek University of Technology in Pyongyang, where he majored in data processing. He pursued graduate studies at Hamhung Computer College where he studied operating systems, hardware technology and network theory - before going on to spend 19 years teaching students-turned-recruits for the North Korean regime's cyberwarfare units at Hamheung Computer College and Hamheung Communist College.
Kim was also in charge of monitoring contraband South Korean television dramas and foreign books and managing other classified materials, until he was caught renting some of the seized loot to a friend. He escaped North Korea in 2003 via China, and since 2004 has settled in Seoul as the head of a defectors' group named North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity.
It is difficult to tell that Kim is a defector, save for the momentary lapse in the way he speaks Korean: when it switches from the softer roll of the South Korean accent to the more rigid, structured North Korean manner of speech.
Speaking via Skype, Kim told Al Jazeera that, as of last year, North Korea has procured more than 3,000 hackers serving in the North and abroad in China, Russia and elsewhere.
Kim said
(Excerpt) Read more at english.aljazeera.net ...
NK hackers are probably ronery.
Uh-oh — They’d better watch out, or Zero will completely ignore this and issue another stupid angry ultimatum to Israel.
Ho-hum, it’s only another act of war.
This is a country that counterfeits American money at will, a previous act of war that would have gotten them annihilated in a just world.
Even broken clocks are right twice a day. They deserve credit for this article. I can't remember anytime I've said that before about an al-Jazeera article.
One good EMP burst over several of these D-PRICK facilities out to take them offline for a little while. Just thinkin’ (and of course, it is in the joint US-South Korean and joint US-Japan contingency plans for the Korean Peninsula).
I wonder how many of these hackers are working at the State Department?
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