North Korea evades UN sanctions using crypto for weapons, raw materials: report

North Korea is circumventing UN sanctions by using cryptocurrency to trade raw materials and military weaponry, and by deploying large numbers of IT workers abroad to launder funds and generate income for Pyongyang, an international sanctions monitoring group has reported.

Under leader Kim Jong-un, Pyongyang has ramped up cyber operations in recent years, turning hacking into a key source of foreign currency in the face of biting sanctions over its nuclear and weapons programmes.

The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team found that North Korea’s sophisticated cyber force had stolen at least US$1.65 billion from January to September, including US$1.4 billion from the crypto exchange Bybit in February.

That was in addition to North Korea’s ill-gotten cryptocurrency gains of US$1.2 billion in 2024, the monitoring group said in a report on Wednesday.

Pyongyang funnelled the funds into “the unlawful development of its WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and ballistic missile programmes”, it said.

The report’s authors found that North Korean officials used a type of cryptocurrency called stablecoin “for procurement-related transactions, including the sale and transfer of military equipment and raw materials such as copper, which is used in munitions production”.

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