A former North Korean hacker speaks out

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Click Here

Episode: A former North Korean hacker speaks out
Date: December 5, 2025
Host: Dina Temple-Raston (Recorded Future News)

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Episode Overview

This episode revisits the compelling true story of Kim Ji Min, a former North Korean IT worker (and defector), offering a rare, insider look into the Hermit Kingdom’s covert digital labor force—an “army” of tech workers trained to infiltrate foreign companies, steal money, and propagate cyber operations for Kim Jong Un’s regime. Through interviews with Kim (voiced in English) and Bada Nam of the PS Corps NGO, the episode exposes both the technical machinery and the deep human cost of North Korea’s global cyber campaign.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. North Korea’s Hidden Export: IT Workers for Espionage

• North Korea trains and sends young IT professionals abroad (primarily to China or Russia) not for innovation, but to conduct cybercrime and funnel earnings back to the regime.
  “The main market for the North Korean IT workers is the US market.”
  — Kim Ji Min [07:26]

• Workers are often disguised as remote employees, leveraging fake resumes and even AI-generated images to slip into companies undetected.
  “The North Koreans who are hacking your inbox... are actually prisoners themselves.”
  — Dina Temple-Raston [02:07]

2. Life for North Korean IT Workers: Surveillance and Fear

• Life abroad means constant surveillance—mandatory screen monitoring, suspicion among co-workers, and severe consequences for slip-ups.
  “Screen monitoring systems are installed on all computers... Not installing the screen monitoring program is considered to be something you shouldn't be doing and you are handled like a criminal.”
  — Kim Ji Min [09:27]

• Team leaders operate a regimented system, and failure to perform results in immediate replacement and repatriation to North Korea.
  “It's like the military, and each team has a leader. If someone can't do their job, that person is sent back to North Korea and substituted with someone new.”
  — Kim Ji Min [01:53]

• The regime holds workers’ families hostage—promising a cut of their earnings as a carrot, but also using the threat of retribution as a stick.
  “Every North Korean who’s going abroad, they need to leave their families back in North Korea, kind of like hostages.”
  — Bada Nam [08:41]

3. Isolation and Psychological Toll

• The psychological impact is severe: stress, isolation, and the constant struggle between loyalty, survival, and fear for loved ones.
  “The stress and isolation drove many to insanity.”
  — Kim Ji Min [02:22]

• Kim Ji Min’s emotional recollection encapsulates the double life—fleeting freedom colored by eventual despair:
  “When you first go abroad, you can still feel good for about three years... But those years fly by so fast.”
  — Kim Ji Min [01:11], [12:35]
  “Once flying into North Korea from China... it is like watching colored television in China. Then entering North Korea, it felt like switching to black and white.”
  — Kim Ji Min [12:54]

4. The Regime’s Evolving Toolkit: AI and Beyond

• North Korea is stepping up its game with “Research Center 227,” an internal AI lab tasked with building homegrown tools for social engineering and cyberattacks. “Their mandate is simple and chilling. Build a homegrown North Korean AI. Why? To make their phishing schemes smarter, their fake recruiters more convincing...”
  — Dina Temple-Raston [11:03]

• Experts like Bada Nam warn that AI will supercharge North Korea’s ability to execute more sophisticated and convincing attacks:
  “Even for the illegal IT workers from North Korea, they will use AIs and try to attack our life... in very creative ways than we expected.”
  — Bada Nam [11:56]

5. Reframing North Korean IT Workers: From Enemies to Victims

• South Korean perspectives on North Korea have evolved—from “wolves” and “enemies” to a more compassionate understanding of ordinary North Koreans as victims of an oppressive regime. “They are kind of like same people. They are under the oppression of the brutal regime... Actually we were one family for 5,000 years and just separated for 70 years. We should be reunificated and need to work, live together, be together.”
  — Bada Nam [05:34]

• Kim Ji Min, now living in South Korea, earns less but expresses happiness and hope: “Actually he’s earning less money than when he was in China because he cannot do money laundering. But he’s very happy now and he wanted to improve the IT workers’ human rights.”
  — Bada Nam [13:14]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Kim Ji Min on the illusion of freedom:
  “When you first go abroad, you can still feel good for about three years. It's much better than being in North Korea. But those years fly by so fast.” [01:11], [12:35]

• Kim Ji Min on returning to North Korea:
  “Once flying into North Korea from China... it felt like switching to black and white.” [12:54]

• Bada Nam on changing perspectives:
  “We were one family for 5,000 years...We should be reunificated and need to work, live together, be together." [05:34]

• Kim Ji Min, on perpetual risk:
  “We were under constant surveillance.” [03:18]

• Dina Temple-Raston on the digital machinery:
  “Comrades in sweatpants, sharing bunk beds, logging on, breaking in, getting paid, and watching their backs.” [02:43]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:11] – Kim Ji Min shares his initial feelings after leaving North Korea
• [02:07-02:30] – Description of IT worker life and psychological toll
• [04:26-05:34] – Bada Nam recounts how South Korean views on North Korea evolved
• [07:26-08:06] – The reality of working as an IT export: quotas, locations, surveillance
• [09:27-09:54] – Monitoring, surveillance, and lack of privacy
• [11:03-12:09] – Introduction and discussion of AI-powered cyber operations
• [12:54-13:34] – Kim Ji Min’s story of leaving and his current life in South Korea

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Tone & Language

The episode maintains a human, empathetic, and investigative tone—making complex cyber phenomena accessible by focusing on people and their stories. Dina Temple-Raston and Bada Nam provide clear, jargon-free explanations, while Kim Ji Min’s testimony offers intimate, emotional insight into the lives of North Korea’s hidden digital workforce.

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Transcript

[Kim Ji Min]

Chatgpt AI Machine Satellite engine ignition.

[Dina Templerest]

Click here and lift up.

Hey, it's Dena. The Click Here team is taking a short breather, just long enough to get ahead on reporting for 2026. And when we come back in the new year, we've got a little surprise waiting for you. It involves transmitters and antennas, and let's just say we're going back to our roots. More on that soon. But for now, we wanted to revisit a story from last spring that's been lingering with us for years. North Korea has been quietly exporting something unexpected. An army of IT workers. Not to innovate, but to infiltrate. They pose as remote workers, slip into companies and burrow into their systems, often funneling the proceeds back to Pyongyang. And we sat down with one of them, a defector who walked us through the machinery of that hidden digital economy and what it cost him to leave it behind. Here's his story.

[Kim Ji Min]

When you first go abroad, you can still feel good for about three years. It's much better than being in North Korea. But those years fly by so fast.

[Dina Templerest]

This is Kim Ji Min. He's a North Korean defector who used to live in Pyongyang. We asked someone to voice his answers for us in English. And once upon a time, not so long ago, he lived a secret life. He was part of a small army of young men trained in computers, sent abroad, and then forced to scam the world on behalf of the government. We don't hear from them often. They usually don't talk. But this week, in a matter of speaking, Kim did.

[Kim Ji Min]

It's like the military, and each team has a leader. If someone can't do their job, that person is sent back to North Korea and substituted with someone new.

[Dina Templerest]

And what Kim Ji Min makes clear is that the North Koreans who are hacking your inbox, pretending to be job applicants, uploading malware laced resumes and AI generated pictures to job sites are actually prisoners themselves.

[Kim Ji Min]

The stress and isolation drove many to insanity.

[Dina Templerest]

I'm Dina Templerest, and this is Click Here's Mic Drop, a deeper dive into one of our favorite interviews of the week.

And today, a rare voice from inside the North Korean regiment. A man who was part of the Hermit Kingdom's massive cyber army and then left it behind. He declined to talk to us directly, but he did share his story with an NGO based in Seoul called PS Corps. And what it provides is a rare peek into the world of North Korea's cyber warriors. Not soldiers in uniform exactly. More like comrades in sweatpants, sharing Bunk beds, logging on, breaking in, getting paid, and watching their backs.

[Kim Ji Min]

We were under constant surveillance.

[Dina Templerest]

Stay with us.

[Cyber Daily Announcer]

If you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy, sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News. It serves up the day's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication, the Record, and and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to the Record Media and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity right in your inbox.

[Dina Templerest]

I'm Dina Templewurst and this is Click. Here's Mic Drop.

If you grew up in South Korea, North Korea is a bit of an obsession. A lot of South Koreans don't think of the people who live on the other side of the DMZ as long lost cousins. They think of them as the enemy.

[Bada Nam]

North Korea is always an enemy.

Probably you understand as an American, like they are communists. They are biggest enemy.

[Dina Templerest]

This is Bada Nam. He's the Secretary General of the PS Corps ngo and he grew up in South Korea and he was raised with a steady diet of government propaganda.

[Bada Nam]

When I was.

A little kid, there was a kind of like cartoon like noticed for me as a wolf doing some strange things.

Not only just bad guys, they are threatening entire world and they are threatening our life.

[Dina Templerest]

The cartoon he remembers most, one in which a North Korean general is literally depicted as a wolf.

Eventually outgrew this version of reality. And as he got older, he began to see the North Koreans not as wolves, but as victims.

[Bada Nam]

I realized that they are kind of like same people. They are under the oppression of the brutal regime. And actually we were one family for 5,000 years and just separated for 70 years. We should be reunificated and need to work, live together, be together. Because we are very close actually.

[Dina Templerest]

And in his work at PS Corps, that realization kept coming back in sharper relief. Not just that they should be reunified, but that a lot of North Koreans aren't so much the enemy as they are victims. Something he understood even better when he started talking to IT workers like Kim Ji Min.

You know, in the old Soviet Union, when they saw young kids who were very good athletes, they would train them as very small kids so that they could become like Olympic gymnasts. Does the same thing happen in North Korea? Do they look for people who are really good in math and computers?

[Bada Nam]

Yeah, actually, like if you are very smart.

And in a talented education, then you can learn computers. There Computer science. Then when you graduated, then you have some chance to be the IT worker.

[Dina Templerest]

But IT worker doesn't mean what it sounds like. You didn't just land a great job writing code for a startup or developing a great new game. In this case, you're building spyware, infiltrating companies and laundering crypto.

[Kim Ji Min]

The main market for the North Korean IT workers is the US market.

[Dina Templerest]

That was Kim Ji Min, the former North Korean IT worker. Again. Once selected, workers like him are sent abroad, usually to China or Russia, somewhere with decent Internet and not too many questions.

[Kim Ji Min]

There is no Internet in North Korea and not many resources for computer science education. North Korea started sending IT workers abroad in large numbers in the 2010s. At that time it was considered a great opportunity if you could go abroad.

[Dina Templerest]

They live in dorm style houses, sharing meals, swapping code under constant pressure.

[Kim Ji Min]

There is a monthly quota we have to meet.

Programmers have to earn more than that to make a profit or send money to their family.

[Dina Templerest]

If they meet the quota, they get a cut. Maybe 20% of what they earn. The rest goes straight to the regime. But Butta Nam from the PES core NGO says that money comes with significant strings.

[Bada Nam]

Every North Korean who's like going abroad, they need to leave their families back in North Korea, kind of like hostages. They could get some of the promised money, like 5 or 10% of total earnings. They promised money, they could get it when they are coming back to North Korea.

[Dina Templerest]

There aren't just carrots, but also sticks. Families are held sort of hostage not just by the promise of money, but under threat if their family member doesn't do as they're told. So even if you want to escape, your family's safety hangs in the balance. And Kim Ji Min says that balance is under constant surveillance and assessment.

[Kim Ji Min]

Screen monitoring systems are installed on all computers. In order to surveil them, team leaders use them for surveillance. Simply not installing. The screen monitoring program is considered to be something you shouldn't be doing and you are handled like a criminal.

[Dina Templerest]

There's no real privacy, not online, not offline. Surveillance comes from all sides. What the regime might not see your co workers do and they might report you.

[Bada Nam]

So it is kind of slavery working conditions.

[Dina Templerest]

Of course the regime doesn't see it that way. To them this is a well oiled export operation in which hundreds of millions of dollars are generated by invisible workers. And now that operation is evolving. When we come back, we'll explain. Stay with us.

[Kim Ji Min]

Every day it's getting harder to tell what's real and what's not.

[Bada Nam]

Alex reassured me that he was a fully licensed and certified psychologist. But in fact, Alex is not a person. But it is an unfeeling chatbot.

[Kim Ji Min]

I'm Dexter Thomas, and every week on my podcast Kill Switch, we look at the right now of living in the future to help you take back control of your life. Listen to Kill switch in the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Dina Templerest]

On how North Korea is quietly leveling up its cyber operations. And one of the more surprising moves, a new unit called Research Center 227, essentially an AI foundry tucked inside the regime. Their mandate is simple and chilling. Build a homegrown North Korean AI. Why? To make their phishing schemes smarter, their fake recruiters more convincing. They're deep fake influencers, just real enough to pass a cursory glance. It's propaganda, reimagined for the algorithmic age when influence comes wrapped in illusion and beauty. Filters double as bullet points. Do you believe that in the future it's just going to keep AI is just going to keep getting bigger so that these IT workers can do more or less fake identities better?

[Bada Nam]

Yeah, absolutely. And even for the illegal IT workers from North Korea, they will use AIs and try to attack our life.

In a different ways, very creative ways than we expected.

[Dina Templerest]

But even as the tools change, former IT worker Kim Ji Min says the MO stays the same. Pressure, quotas, surveillance, isolation. Rinse and repeat.

[Kim Ji Min]

When you first go abroad, you can still feel good for about three years. It's much better than being in old Korea. But those years fly by so fast.

[Dina Templerest]

And then the glow fades and the gray sets in.

[Kim Ji Min]

Once flying into North Korea from China, I thought to myself that it is like watching colored television in China. Then entering North Korea, it felt like switching to black and white.

[Dina Templerest]

Bada Nam says Kim Ji Min eventually got out of North Korea. He lives in South Korea now, but he still works in it.

[Bada Nam]

She said that actually he's earning less money than when he was in China because he cannot do money laundering. But she said he's very happy now and he wanted to improve the IT workers human rights.

[Dina Templerest]

And his wanting to improve North Korea's IT worker rights, well, that might be the most subversive code of all.

From recorded future news, this has been Click Here's Mic Drop. It was written and produced by Megan Dietrich, Sean Powers, Erica Gaeda, Zach Hirsch and me, Dina Templreston. It was edited by Karen Duffin. We'll be back on Tuesday. Until then, have a great weekend.

[Cyber Daily Announcer]

If you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy. Sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News, and it serves up the day's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication the Record, and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to the Record Media and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity right in your inbox.