US administration considering North Korean ‘malign activity’ in policy review

The administration of US President Joe Biden says it is considering North Korea’s “malign activity,” including alleged cyber threats, in a review of US policy toward the country.

“North Korea poses a significant cyber threat to financial institutions, it remains a cyber espionage threat, it retains the ability to conduct disruptive cyber attacks,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price told a news briefing on Wednesday.

“Our review of our policy to North Korea will take into account the totality of the malign activity and the threats that are emanating from North Korea,” he added. “Of course its malicious cyber activity is something we are carefully evaluating and looking at as well.”

Price made the allegations following recent claims by South Korea that the North may have successfully hacked global pharmaceutical firms such as Pfizer to gain information on coronavirus vaccines. But he declined to comment on the specific claims.

North Korea rejects accusations of posing cyber threat to US

North Korea dismisses accusations by the United States that it poses a cyber threat to America, saying the allegations aim to tarnish Pyongyang’s image.

The North Korea policy review was launched shortly after Biden took office on January 20.

The US has imposed rounds of unilateral sanctions and spearheaded multilateral ones on North Korea since 2006 over its nuclear and missile programs.

But former US President Donald Trump attempted to court Pyongyang, meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un three times and signing a briefly-worded agreement with him. That attempted diplomacy however failed when Trump refused to offer North Korea any sanctions relief in return for several steps taken by Pyongyang to address Western concerns about its missile and nuclear programs.

Biden said last October that he would only meet with Kim on the condition that Pyongyang would agree to reduce its nuclear capacity.

Kim says US ‘biggest enemy” of North Korea no matter who occupies White House

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un says the US is the biggest enemy of his country and that the US policy does not change with presidents.

US charges North Korean hackers in $1.3bn theft scheme

On Wednesday, the US Justice Department unsealed its indictment of three alleged North Korean hackers for a range of activities that it claimed were aimed at stealing a total of $1.3 billion in crypto and traditional currencies from banks and other associations.

Filed in federal court in Los Angeles, the case builds on previous charges against one of the three, identified as Park Jin-hyok, who was charged with the 2016 theft of $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh, among other charges.

The new charges added two defendants, Jon Chang-hyok and Kim Il.

“Over at least seven years, the officials created malicious cryptocurrency applications that opened back doors into targets' computers; hacked into companies marketing and trading digital currencies like bitcoin; and developed a blockchain platform to evade sanctions and secretly raise funds,’’ the department claimed.

The three North Koreans were also claimed to have robbed digital currency exchanges in Slovenia and Indonesia and extorted a New York exchange of $11.8 million.

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