https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-weapons-program-it-workers-f3df7c120522b0581db5c0b9682ebc9b
Court documents allege that the government of North Korea dispatched thousands of skilled IT workers to live primarily in China and Russia with the goal of deceiving businesses from the U.S. and elsewhere into hiring them as freelance remote employees.
Is the simplest explanation really that a hostage situation that is always active and victimizing like a minimum of 10,000 people at a time, with zero public leaks, defectors, or anything else, while opening the DPRK up to revolt by creating a class of thousands of people whose families they directly threatened who also have easy access to the broader internet (Korean IT workers in China), versus . . .
These workers are supporting their families and an income tax was applied? Or just that the US is making shit up?
Is the byzantine conspiracy with an astonishing level of success really the most probably answer? What does it say about your worldview that this was what you "feel like" they are doing?
I feel like the real threat is 10,000 people coming home and teaching their family (maybe even community?) about what the rest of the world is like and what the real world outside North Korea looks like; can you imagine what 10,000 individuals in addition to 10,000 families all learning about democracy and freedom from the internet can do to the country? But I'm sure Kim Jong Un thought of that already; 10,000 families learning about modern society can't possibly spread like wildfire, after all it's only 10,000 families, that's nothing; Israel killed that many in individuals just this week.