Online Games: North Korea's New Cash Cow

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North Korea needs money, and Kim Jong-il seems to have found a profitable venture to get it. According to a recent report by the New York Times, the country’s leader organized a squad of young video game experts. Not to compete in world gaming tournaments, of course, but to exploit vulnerabilities of South Korean online games.

This squad of hackers (all bright young graduates of some of North Korea‘s elite science universities) developed a software that bypasses server security of online games, and allows unmanned computers to play the games 24/7 to farm in-game currency. Just like Chinese gaming farms, Kim Jong-il’s squad sells the in-game currency they acquired for real money on web sites. And this venture proved to be a profitable one for the North Korean leader, too – the whole operation already made $6 million within less than 2 years.

North Korea, of course, denies the allegation, and calls bluff on what it calls South Korea’s conspiratorial accusations.

[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]