Posts tagged Reconnaissance General Bureau
Reports: South Korean arrested on spying charges
Nov 18th
A former officer in South Korea’s military reserve has been arrested on charges of passing documents to a North Korea agent, according to South Korean media reports.
The individual, who was only identified as a 37-year old with the family name of “Jeon,” was arrested under the National Security Law for allegedly passing information to North Korea on five occasions between November 2011 and January 2013, said the Joong Ang Ilbo.
Jeon first made contact with an agent working for North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau in late 2011 when he was running an business that collected cyber money from online games, said The Korea Herald.
The Reconnaissance General More >
North Korea doubles hackers in two years, says Yonhap
Jul 7th
North Korea has roughly doubled the number of hackers it employs to conduct cyber-attacks, South Korea’s Yonhap News said on Sunday.
The news agency quoted an unidentified military source as saying North Korea “appears to have” 5,900 personnel for cyber-warfare, up from about 3,000 people two years ago.
Yonhap didn’t disclose how its source had access to the current information.
The South Korean government often uses anonymous leaks to put intelligence regarding North Korea into the public domain. It sometimes uses similar leaks to disclose false or unverified information for political purposes.
The 3,000-person figure was provided at a cyber-security conference in Seoul in 2012 by Kim More >
DPRK military could turn to cyber-warfare for lower costs
Mar 7th
North Korea’s military could turn to cyber-based attacks and weapons as a more cost-effective alternative to conventional weapons, the U.S. Department of Defense says in a new report.
But the annual report to Congress on “Military and Security Developments Involving the DPRK” is also a lot more cautious in blaming North Korea for a series of recent cyber attacks that have targeted South Korea.
Unlike the statements and reports that comes from the South Korean government, the North’s capability to launch attacks isn’t even stated as a certainty by the DoD.
“North Korea probably has a military offensive cyber operations (OCO) capability,” it says in More >
Report: South Korean arrested for aiding North’s spy bureau
Dec 22nd
A South Korean businessman has been arrested by local authorities on suspicion of passing classified information and video and audio system technology to North Korea, Yonhap reported on Saturday.
The report said the suspect, identified only as a 54-year-old man called “Kang,” worked with agents of North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau to pass the information. He regularly traveled to China and made contact with the agents directly and through email.
Few other pieces of information were available.
The case could be interesting because the Reconnaissance General Bureau is the Korean People’s Army unit responsible for spying activities, including infiltration of South Korea and electronic More >
Pyongyang satellite monitoring station
Feb 12th
In the northern Pyongyang suburb of Hyongjesan there are twelve large satellite dishes on a hillside. The dishes, easily visible in satellite photos, have been there for at least a decade and while their function is unknown, their close proximity to North Korea’s signals intelligence headquarters might be a clue to their purpose.
Some of the dishes have buildings next to them while others are surrounded by trees. Their exact size is difficult to determine, but most appear to be around 16- or 18-meters in diameter. That makes them large enough to receive signals from many satellites in orbit above Asia, but what are More >
