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The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal

Investing and finance 6,720,000 subscribers

The North Korean Operatives Hiding Inside U.S. Companies | WSJ Documentary

13.08.2026
Published: 13.08.2026 Category: Investing and finance

Episode details

Episode description

North Korea has built a secret workforce inside American companies. Using stolen identities, AI tools and U.S. accomplices, its operatives have cheated their way into remote jobs in an effort to earn money for Kim Jong Un’s regime. The FBI says there are likely thousands of them applying for jobs across America and hundreds of millions of dollars have been funneled back to the regime. WSJ’s documentary exclusively follows a single cell of these operatives. Drawn from a trove of leaked data—browser history, emails, calendars and never-before-seen screen recordings pulled from the team’s own computers—our yearlong investigation offers a rare look at how North Korea’s undercover workers get hired. Chapters: 0:00 North Koreans working for U.S. companies? 1:22 How the cell we tracked operates 5:28 Laptop farmers: Where do U.S. companies send the tech? 10:10 How this scam came to be 12:06 The victims 19:33 How the money moves 21:43 Unmasking our cell of IT workers 23:53 Evolution, enforcement and prevention 29:49 The fallout #NorthKorea #Investigation #WSJ

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