South Korea, the US and Japan called for stronger international support of efforts to ban North Korea from sending workers abroad and curb the North’s cybercrimes as a way to block the country’s means to fund its nuclear program.
The top South Korean, US and Japanese nuclear envoys met in Seoul on Friday in their first gathering in four months to discuss how to cope with North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal.The North’s recent weapons tests show it is intent on acquiring more advanced missiles designed to attack the US and its allies, rather than returning to talks.
Despite 11 rounds of UN sanctions and pandemic-related hardships that have worsened its economic and food problems, North Korea still devotes much of its scarce resources to its nuclear and missile programs. Contributing to financing its weapons program is also likely the North’s crypto hacking and other illicit cyber activities and the wages sent by North Korean workers remaining in China, Russia and elsewhere despite an earlier UN order to repatriate them by the end of 2019, experts say.
In a joint statement, the South Korean, US and Japanese envoys urged the international community to thoroughly abide by UN resolutions on the banning of North Korean workers overseas, according to Seoul’s Foreign Ministry.
“We need to make sure that its provocations never go unpunished. We will effectively counter North Korea’s future provocations and cut their revenue streams that fund these illegal activities,” Kim Gunn, the South Korean envoy, said in televised comments at the start of the meeting.
South Korea’s spy agency said in December that North Korean hackers had stolen an estimated 1.5 trillion won (USD 1.2 billion) in cryptocurrency and other virtual assets in the past five years, more than half of it last year alone.
