North Korea makes money from South Korean mmogs

According to The New York Times, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is trying to earn extra money by having a special government agency play popular South Korean mmogs and sell the collected virtual goods.

According to the South Korean government, North Korean neighbors have found a new way to fill the treasury, such as reports The New York Times. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is said to have set up a group of hackers operating out of northern China. The hackers would target popular South Korean mmogs such as Lineage and Dungeon and Fighter. The group allegedly hacked into the mmog’s servers, making it possible to have a battery of ‘dozens’ of PCs play the games fully automatically. The virtual goods that the hackers played together in this way were then put up for sale online.

The group would have earned six million dollars in two years that way. More than half of that was used as revenue for the hackers themselves, but the rest of the amount was paid to the ailing North Korean government, according to a spokesman for the South Korean International Crime Investigation Unit.

However, the spokesperson was also able to report that four South Koreans and one Chinese have now been arrested in connection with the hacks. The hackers themselves were kept out of harm’s way. However, the South Koreans think they know that the group comes from the official Korea Computer Center in Pyongyang and from the Korea Neungnado General Trading Company. Both have ties to Office 39, a shadowy Communist Party agency tasked with bringing in foreign currency, the police spokesman said. The same spokesperson also made it clear that the establishment of centers with computerized playing systems is more common and that there are more such centers, both in China and in South Korea itself.