North Korea stays silent after being named behind an 8-trillion-won hack, focuses on money laundering

[Financial News] North Korea remained silent after the FBI named it as the main culprit behind a cryptocurrency hack worth around 8,000,000,004,000 won. Despite the hacking incident, U.S. President Donald Trump signaled that he was willing to talk with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but North Korea still did not respond. In a statement released on the 31st of last month, the FBI officially named North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor as being behind the hack.
Instead of commenting on the Binance hack, North Korea condemned joint exercises conducted by U.S. and South Korean military authorities in response to the North Korean nuclear threat. A statement was issued not by Kim Yo Jong, director of the Workers’ Party of Korea’s General Affairs Department, who had consistently criticized South Korea, but by Kim Jong-sik, first vice director of the Munitions Industry Department of the WPK Central Committee. It is unusual for a munitions official, rather than North Korea’s Ministry of National Defence or a military official, to issue a statement on U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises.
In a statement released through the Korean Central News Agency on the 2nd, First Vice Director Kim referred to the recent U.S.-South Korea military authorities’ nuclear-conventional integration (CNI) tabletop exercise (TTX), ‘Iron Mace’ (literally, ‘iron mace’), and denounced it as “the most heinous rehearsal for nuclear war, conducted entirely with the aim of using nuclear weapons against our country.”
He also continued to criticize the South Korean military’s annual field maneuver exercise Hoguk, the U.S.-South Korea joint air force exercise Freedom Flag, and the U.S.-Japan joint military exercise Keen Sword.
North Korea, however, is staying silent and taking no action in response to being named as the culprit behind the largest cryptocurrency hack in history, which recently shocked the world. It appears to be waiting to see what regulatory measures and other actions U.S. authorities take, rather than immediately denying responsibility. North Korea is also reportedly focusing on laundering the stolen crypto assets to evade tracing.
The stolen crypto assets are reportedly being converted mainly into Ethereum, with further laundering through decentralized finance (DeFi) expected. Hackers convert assets quickly to avoid having them frozen. Stablecoins such as USDT and USD Coin (USDC) can be frozen at specific addresses by their issuers. Ethereum, by contrast, has no central issuer, making it difficult to freeze assets directly in the same way.
The Bitcoin stolen by North Korean hackers from Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, amounts to three times North Korea’s annual exports. It exceeds Tesla’s holdings and is more than twice the amount held by the government of El Salvador, which has accumulated Bitcoin at the national level. It also comes close to the 18,712 Bitcoin held by SpaceX, the space company led by Elon Musk.
[email protected] Kim Kyung-soo Reporter