Top North Korean Headlines September 2021 — Crossing Borders - Helping North Korean Refugees and Orphans

Hacker Group in North Korea Targets Defector

A hacking group linked to the DPRK, known as ScarCruft or Venus 121, had allegedly hacked into North Korean defector Kang Mi-jin's email account, as well as her accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.
In total, at least four of Kang’s accounts using different passwords across different platforms were compromised.
Over the course of several weeks, the attackers impersonated Kang by sending a malicious document to a contact working on DPRK issues and sent a message to NKnet’s (an organisation focusing on DPRK human rights issues) executive director Eun Kyoung Kwon to congratulate her on a new job.
However, the odd choice of words made Kwon suspicious of the message. “The language the hacker used was not explicitly awkward from a South Korean point of view, but there was definitely a subtle North Korean nuance in the phrases,” Kwon told NK News.

North Korea’s unification minister announced that its trade with China plunged 82.1% on-year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition to North Korea’s focus on addressing recent challenges in relation to protracted sanctions, the COVID-19 pandemic and recent flood damages, the North is also building a quarantine facility in the border area to encourage import of goods to address its continued instability in the supply and demand in rice, food and medicine.
Nevertheless, North Korea, which claims to be COVID-free, continues to impose stringent controls at its borders.

North Korea requested that the COVID-19 vaccines from the Covax program (which aims to help poorer nations obtain vaccines) be redirected to countries experiencing surges in view of global vaccine shortages.
It was alleged that some 37,291 North Korean health care workers and people experiencing flu-like symptoms had been tested and all were found to be negative.
North Korea has previously rejected shipments of around 2 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines and multiple offers of Sputnik vaccines from Russia, expressing concerns over potential side effects and doubt over the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccinations.

Kim Jong Un has been summoned to face demands for compensation by 5 ethnic Korean residents of Japan for alleged human rights abuses in North Korea after joining a resettlement program.
About 93,000 ethnic Korean residents of Japan and their families who faced discrimination in Japan went to North Korea “for a better life” under the resettlement program (which continued until 1984). However, they did not receive free healthcare, education, jobs and other benefits as promised by North Korea, and were instead assigned manual work at mines, forests or farms.
The plaintiffs demanded 100 million yen ($900,000 USD) each in compensation from North Korea.
Kim is not expected to appear in court for the October 14 hearing. This is a rare instance in which a foreign leader is not granted sovereign immunity, said Kenji Fukuda, a lawyer representing the five plaintiffs. (Sovereign immunity refers to the international law doctrine that one state has no right to judge the actions of another by the standards of its national law, thus rendering it free from civil suit or criminal prosecution.)
Although Fukuda said he is not expecting Kim to provide compensation even if ordered by the court, it is hoped that the case can set a precedent for future negotiations between Japan and North Korea on seeking the North’s responsibility and normalizing diplomatic ties.