![Despite the North's ongoing nuclear tests, representatives from the United States, South Korea, and North Korea met [Jeon Heon-Kyun/AFP].](https://www.emcnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/download-_2_-1.jpg)
The US, South Korea, and Japan have all voiced grave worry over North Korea’s “malicious” cyber-activities in support of its forbidden weapons programs. According to the UN, cryptocurrency assets stolen by North Korean hackers have been a crucial source of revenue for the country’s weapons programs, with such theft hitting a record last year. “We underline with worry that abroad DPRK IT employees continue to use fabricated identities and nationalities” to avoid UN sanctions and collect funding for missile programs, the three nations’ envoys said in a joint statement on Friday, using the abbreviation for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
South Korea’s ambassador, Kim Gunn, met with his US and Japanese counterparts this week and decried North Korea’s repeated nuclear tests. According to Japan’s foreign ministry, the ambassador “strongly criticized” North Korea’s “unprecedented number and method” of missile launches as a significant and urgent danger to regional security. Japan announced a two-year renewal of its trade embargo against North Korea, with humanitarian exceptions. Since March, the United States and South Korea have been conducting a series of annual springtime exercises, including air and sea drills and their first large-scale amphibious landing maneuvers in five years. North Korea has responded angrily to the exercises, calling them a dress rehearsal for an invasion. In response, it has displayed new, smaller nuclear weapons and launched an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching anyplace in the United States. It has also tested a nuclear-capable underwater attack drone.
As Pyongyang expands its military weapons, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has urged for more awareness of the country’s ongoing human rights violations. Seoul’s Unification Ministry stated last week in its first publicly disclosed assessment on the issue that North Korea murders its nationals for narcotics, religious activities, and distributing South Korean media. Pyongyang has traditionally dismissed international criticism of its human rights record as part of a US plot to destabilize its rule.
