North Korean Authorities Arrest State‑Trained Hackers Accused of Laundering Funds Through Crypto

TL;DR

• Elite North Korean hackers, former members of a state cyberwarfare unit, were arrested on July 12 after stealing funds from the regime itself.
• The hacking group infiltrated the Chosun Central Bank and the Foreign Trade Bank, converting state funds into cryptocurrencies to launder them through brokers in China.
• The National Intelligence Agency traced the encrypted transactions to a safe house in Pyongyang and arrested those involved while the operation was still underway.

The regime of North Korea, internationally known for sponsoring massive cryptocurrency thefts, now faces an unprecedented paradox: Hackers trained by the State itself were arrested on July 12, accused of stealing and laundering funds from the country’s most sensitive financial institutions. The information comes from a report published by Daily NK, citing an anonymous source inside Pyongyang.

According to the report, the attackers infiltrated the internal networks of the Chosun Central Bank, responsible for currency issuance and state fund management, and of the Foreign Trade Bank, in charge of external payments and foreign currency transactions. Once inside, they split the funds into small transfers to evade detection tools and routed them to cryptocurrency wallets abroad. Brokers in China converted the coins into cash, while contacts in border areas exchanged those assets for US dollars and Chinese yuan.

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