The West, North Korea and cyber operations

Considering the way Kim Jong-un rages at Western leaders, especially the leader of the Free World, Donald Trump, it is obvious that the tyrant is angry and shocked that he is not accorded any respect in the West.
Kim is seen as a crazy person who is not really capable of inflicting any serious damage.  The principal reason for this Western derision is the fact that the North Korean economy is a ramshackle economy where the per-capita GDP is less than £2000.  As the situation is compounded by international sanctions, the country suffers from energy, food, electricity and other shortages. 



Despite this situation, the so-called rogue regime has been able to develop nuclear weapons and the rocketry to deliver them to South Korea, Japan and the United States.

It appears then that Kim's nukes are meant to deter the US from attempting a regime change in North Korea.  The US is not unaware that any aggressive move on its part could lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in South Korea, Japan and the United States.

Kim Jong-un subscribes to the doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD).




On top of all these, Kim has found a less obvious way to hurt the West and its allies.  This is through cyber operations.  North Korean hackers are probably the country's most dangerous weapons.

According to a New York Times expose, North Korean hackers last year almost pulled off the greatest bank heist in history.  They were within a keystroke of stealing a billion dollars from the New York Federal Reserve.




Two years earlier they had carried out a daring attack on Sony Pictures where they stole thousands of documents, wiped internal data centres and destroyed 75% of the company's servers.

Last September, the North Koreans penetrated South Korea's defence data centre and stole a trove of top-secret files that included American and South Korean operational plans for wartime action.

In our opinion at Beulaland, the best way to solve the North Korean problem must be through diplomacy and espionage.