Supreme Court upholds sentence in N. Korea espionage

A prison sentence has been finalized for a cryptocurrency exchange operator who received virtual assets worth about 900 million won from a figure believed to be a North Korean hacker and then attempted to recruit an active-duty military officer to obtain classified military information.

On Dec. 28, the Supreme Court’s Third Bench, presided over by Justice Lee Sook-yeon, upheld a lower court ruling sentencing Lee, 42, the head of a cryptocurrency exchange, to four years in prison and a four-year suspension of qualifications. Lee was convicted of violating the National Security Act, including espionage charges. Prosecutors said he acted on instructions from North Korea and approached an active-duty officer in an effort to have military secrets leaked.

Lee first became acquainted in 2016 with a figure known as “Boris” through an online community. Boris is a Telegram alias widely believed to belong to a North Korean hacker. Lee maintained contact with Boris while participating in the operation of an illegal online gambling site run by him. In 2021, Lee received virtual assets totaling 920 million won from Boris in two separate transactions. Authorities believe Boris is an operative of the 110th Research Institute, a hacker unit under North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau. The institute has been identified as responsible for distributed denial-of-service attacks targeting the presidential office and the National Assembly in 2009.

In 2018, Boris instructed Lee to gather information on an Army captain identified only by the surname Kim, 33, who was said to belong to a so-called decapitation unit tasked with eliminating North Korea’s leadership in the event of an emergency. Lee passed along Kim’s personal information through a cousin who is a former soldier, and Boris began communicating directly with Kim in 2021. Boris recruited Kim by offering cryptocurrency in exchange for obtaining and transmitting military secrets. Lee served as an intermediary, supplying a watch-type camera and a USB-shaped hacking device known as PoisonTap. Kim brought the devices into his military unit, photographed classified documents, and provided materials to Lee and Boris, including images of the login screen for the South Korean military’s Joint Command and Control System, known as KJCCS.

The trial court found Lee guilty, concluding that Boris was a North Korean operative and that Lee was aware of that fact. The court said that, given Lee committed crimes that could have placed the entire Republic of Korea at risk in pursuit of personal and economic gain, severe punishment was warranted. The appellate court and the Supreme Court upheld the ruling. Captain Kim was separately convicted of violating the Military Secret Protection Act and related charges and received a finalized sentence of 10 years in prison along with a fine of 50 million won.


송혜미 기자 1am@donga.com