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North Korea Farming for Gold, Nukes, and Rolexes?

[Aug 09, 2011, 10:23 am ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

NYTimes.com reports on a group of North Korean computer hackers operating out of Northern China to exploit South Korean game servers for online games such as Lineage to gather in-game gold, with some of the proceeds going back to Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il's coffers, where it may contribute to the purchase of Nukes and Rolexes. They say the gold farmers have raised $6 million USD in under two years, with a portion of the share paid to the hackers being sent back to Pyongyang. Word is: "South Korean and American officials say they believe the slush fund is worth billions, and that Mr. Kim uses it to help finance his nuclear weapons programs and to smuggle Rolex watches and other luxury goods, which he doles out to buy the allegiance of the party and the military elite. Meanwhile, the bulk of his people suffer privation and myriad hardships." Thanks Ant via Slashdot.

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Re: North Korea Farming for Gold, Nukes, and Rolexes?

Aug 9, 2011, 22:22

Dev

Blue, Thanks for the story! Rockn-Roll wrote on Aug 9, 2011, 19:35: It comes from the New York Times so it must be true? I'd believe aliens have landed before I believe that $6 million could be gleaned from Lineage. Lets check over this again shall we? The bit blue quotes says "for online games such as Lineage" and after I RTFA, thats what it says. It mentions another game as well as saying something similar to such games as... Who knows, maybe they did WoW farming too. I don't find it hard to believe a group of hackers/gold farmers raised $6 million in two years, and while yeah I imagine they did other things too, I don't consider it impossible a majority of that was from online game exploiting/farming. If there wasn't a big potential for money, you think blizzard would be putting real money trading into diablo 3?

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