Thomson Reuters
KCNA picture of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watching the test-fire of a strategic submarine underwater ballistic missile
Cho Hyun-chun, the chief of South Korea's Defense Security Command, said this month that its neighbor to the north was running online gambling operations and other businesses that bring in roughly $866 million per year, according to a report from United Press International.
Yu said the hackers running the sites were directly linked to North Korea's intelligence unit, which hosts its cyber division, Bureau 121. The bureau has about 6,000 full-time hackers within its ranks carrying out cyber espionage (mostly against South Korea), offensive hacking operations, and cyber attacks.
North Korea's gambling websites mainly target South Koreans, according to Seoul's intelligence service.
That means that in addition to the country bringing in nearly $1 billion, it could also deploy malicious code that could be used for further spying, Chosunilbo reported.
The country's GDP is estimated at around $40 billion.
Besides online money-making sites, the Hermit Kingdom's hacker army has grown considerably in recent years.
North Korea is often dismissed as a backwards totalitarian regime with little technology - sometimes illustrated by a lack of electricity as seen from space - but it has invested heavily in cyber, which in some ways, allows a nation-state with few resources to inflict real-world damage.
"Given North Korea's bleak economic outlook, [offensive cyber operations] may be seen as a cost effective way to develop asymmetric, deniable military options," reads a 2013 DoD report. In other words, while North Korea may not be able to hurt a Goliath like the US or South Korea with guns or missiles, it sees hacking as a cheaper way of getting to that result.
"This is an area of growth," Gen. Vincent Brooks told Senate leaders in April. "While I would not characterize them as the best in the world, they are among the best in the world and the best organized."