Take something super banal (a mobile fan), give it a blindingly obvious hacker-y feature (USB connectivity), and distribute them among visitors from an adversarial country (the U.S.), and you're going to be hard-pressed to find someone who isn't at least the tiniest bit suspicious, This is so entirely Spy Device 101 that the payload is likely just entertainment for DPRK officials– watching everyone stress out and tear it apart looking for something malicious. And that, in and of itself, is pretty damn twisted.

I'm not sure I would call it twisted - it's humorous to watch, but not particularly malicious, and if there are truly no devices in any of the fans it could even be construed as a gesture of good faith.

I, for one, appreciate the show.

Why are there so many people assuming this was a malicious actor?

It was most likely some organiser just organising swag for the conference, who didn't think about the implications because they weren't aware of them.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (well, ignorance in this case).

Why would the North Koreans go through the trouble of buying a bunch of fans on Aliexpress just to make some security people freak out?

Or they could continue using the attacks that work.

You have much higher faith in humanity than I do.

Like rogue USB-charging ports in airplanes?

Are these documented? I imagine that would have to be snuck in at construction…

Just Google it