Some insight into how they learn the skills...

https://www.businessinsider.com/north-korean-defector-jang-s...

"Mirim University produces most of the hackers that get placed in Bureau 121. It's a highly competitive program, with each class accepting only about 100 students out of 5,000 applicants. They take six 90-minute classes every day, learning different coding languages and operating systems, from C to Linux. Jang says a lot of time was spent dissecting Microsoft programs, like the Windows operating system, and how to attack the overall computer IT systems of enemy countries like the US or South Korea."

Also

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/how-north-korea-rec...

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/913712/North-Korea-late...

Since my other post is being downvoted into oblivion, I thought I'd add this presentation by a North Korean CS teacher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orcmmra9oLQ

>And more importantly, if they had that kind of access to outside information, how do they not know about the atrocities they are involved in

Nation state hacking is like being one of the guys in a missile silo. Your job is to maintain the capability to hurt your enemy. You rarely actually do it though. You just hack media companies and fire off test missiles once in awhile. It's much easier to sleep at night being the guy who does that than being the guy who carts people's families off to the gulag or being the NSA analyst who has to go dig up dirt on politicians.

> , if they had that kind of access to outside information, how do they not know about the atrocities they are involved in?

How many thousands of people work on the US nuclear weapon program - knowing full well the US is the only country to use nuclear weapons, on predominately civilian targets, twice?

>how do they not know about the atrocities they are involved in?

Why do you think this is so obvious? Why are Facebook employees oblivious to the atrocities they contribute to?

Taking domestic propaganda into account, do you think, as a North Korean, your country looks so much worse than the US? From the most cynical view of US foreign policy?

Someone else has mentioned how they learn. As to why they do what they do, it's probably for the same reason people do most things: to get a better life for themselves and their family. I don't think they do this out of fear of becoming the victim, these are elite and well-trained operators. They volunteered to get this education, they aren't conscripts. As crazy as it sounds to you or I, I think these individuals genuinely believe in the DPRK, or at least are apathetic to it and think only in terms of their own advancement.

Remarkably low level citizens (basically grad students) have access to public (monitored) internet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orcmmra9oLQ

My guess is that, like the incubator baby thing in Iraq, the more heinous crimes are just made up. It's easy to make up stories when there's no way to refute them.

The defector stories are already internally inconsistent. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-north-k...

EDIT: Would love to hear something counter in addition to the downvotes. Particularly against Shin Dong-hyuk's testimony which is hugely internally inconsistent, and also the basis for the idea of North Korea's concentration camps.

We have large amounts of testimony and evidence for DPRK concentration camps, dating back decades. It's not like we are relying on a single person's testimony. For instance, we have satellite imagery of the prison camps.

Also, the guardian article that you linked to literally states that just because there are inconsistencies doesn't mean that there aren't serious human rights abuses, including the existence of prison camps.

there’s an industry of tabloids and publishers waiting with open arms for nork defectors to denounce their former government. these defectors are basically the dregs of society in south korea; impoverished, unskilled, widely despised and easily identifiable. many of them effectively live in the projects together, working low wage jobs and facing discrimination from the public. if you can make some bank telling a particularly lurid versions of stories you’ve heard back home, and there’s little other opportunity...

none of this is to say that the NK regime doesn’t commit atrocities. i’m certain some of the stories are true. i only mean to point out that there are perverse incentives that point exclusively in one direction.

> We have large amounts of testimony and evidence for DPRK concentration camps, dating back decades. It's not like we are relying on a single person's testimony.

For camp 14, the supposed concentration camp, we have two eyewitnesses. Shin Dong-hyuk, and Kim Yong. Both of their stories are hugely inconsistent, and they get paid based on how crazy their stories are.

> For instance, we have satellite imagery of the prison camps.

We have satellite imagery that they have prisons. We don't have any imagery of abuses.

> Also, the guardian article that you linked to literally states that just because there are inconsistencies doesn't mean that there aren't serious human rights abuses, including the existence of prison camps.

Yeah, it's a Guardian article. You can't rock the boat too much.

There is not one concentration camp, there are over a dozen. And while I could only find those two you mentioned as eyewitnesses to camp 14, we have plenty of other witnesses to the other camps. Dozens of people going back decades. And even if you consider the entirety of their testimony suspect, these witnesses bare the physical signs of torture and malnutrition.

I'm unclear on what exactly your position is. Are you just skeptical of stories like boiling people in molten iron? If so I can understand. Do you believe that these political re-education camps exist? What about the policy of sending an entire family, including children, to prison if one member of it commits a political offense? Do you believe that these camps are host to abuses, including the torture of prisoners as punishment, forced labor, and inadequate access to food and medical care?

> There is not one concentration camp, there are over a dozen.

Over a dozen prison camps. Camp 14 was the "hotel California" camp supposedly, the others are focused on rehabilitation and release.

> Dozens of people going back decades. And even if you consider the entirety of their testimony suspect, these witnesses bare the physical signs of torture and malnutrition.

Dozens of the literally tens of thousands of North korean defectors. But it's only the ones with the sketchy stories for some reason that get the limelight.

> And while I could only find those two you mentioned as eyewitnesses to camp 14, we have plenty of other witnesses to the other camps. Dozens of people going back decades. And even if you consider the entirety of their testimony suspect, these witnesses bare the physical signs of torture and malnutrition.

I mean, they were under sanctions during a famine. Nearly everyone was malnourished.

> Are you just skeptical of stories like boiling people in molten iron? If so I can understand.

Yes, skeptical to say the least.

> Do you believe that these political re-education camps exist?

I believe that prisons should be focused on rehabilitation and integration back into society, I guess you can call that "political re-education".

> What about the policy of sending an entire family, including children, to prison if one member of it commits a political offense?

I doubt that this exists. What's more likely is that political dissonance (which was outlawed by the US in times of war also), is hard to keep to an individual in the extremely family centric societies of the east, including North Korea and would tend to pull in family members who didn't report it.

> Do you believe that these camps are host to abuses, including the torture of prisoners as punishment, forced labor, and inadequate access to food and medical care?

I think that's true of nearly all prisons, including those in the US. And before you go calling "whataboutism", I think that's core to the distinction made between a "concentration camp" and a prison.

My main issue is how it gets portrayed as worse than the Nazis or Unit 731, when there's essentially no reliable evidence to the fact. All in a context where there's a push for a war with them, and we've manufactured evidence for the past few wars.

>My guess is that, like the incubator baby thing in Iraq, the more heinous crimes are just made up. It's easy to make up stories when there's no way to refute them.

It's also a nice way to prop up the "enemy du jour". You wine and dine some people who got out, and they'll tell any kind of horror story you'd like to hear.

If they don't help, their entire family become victims.

It's hard to imagine standing up to that.