CNN
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North Korean illustrators and graphic designers are believed to have been collaborating with American animation studios on the production of their work without the companies knowing, and the world’s most closed-door public relations agency has been involved in unreleased episodes of several popular American cartoons. This suggests that there is a possibility that one work from a large economic area is included.
The revelation comes from a trove of documents recently discovered by American researchers in a computer server located in North Korea. It’s unclear how the files ended up on this tightly controlled part of the internet, but researchers who analyzed the files told CNN that they were unknowingly entrusted to North Korean workers. He said it appears to be the result of work.
The United States has imposed tough sanctions that prohibit American companies from doing business with the nuclear-armed regime.
In addition to pictures of the next season on Amazon Prime Video The file also includes sketches and videos similar to works from the superhero series “Iyanu: Child of Wonder,” which is scheduled to air on Max, a streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery along with CNN.
There is no evidence that the studio did not know that its own work was located on servers in North Korea.
The files were discovered in December by Nick Roy, a Boston-based cyber detective who regularly scans the North Korean internet as a hobby. Roy discovered a new North Korean website that required no password for outside visitors to access, unlocking a treasure trove of animated sketches that he shared with the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank.
This document contains a set of Chinese instructions translated into Korean. It asks you to adjust the size and style of the animation. Among the documents was an editing sheet containing the specifications for the animation work with the word “Invincible” printed in English.
The findings raise questions about whether U.S. tech and creative arts companies can control their supply chains and avoid work that could inadvertently violate sanctions that prohibit countries from doing business with North Korea. I’m throwing it.
It’s also a rare opportunity to see how graphic designers operate in one of the world’s most closed countries. A 2022 Public Advisory Warning issued by the FBI, State Department, and Treasury Department mentions animation as one of the many fields in which North Korean IT workers trade. U.S. officials are particularly concerned about North Korean workers being hired by U.S. companies under the guise of other nationalities.
US cybersecurity firm Mandiant told CNN that North Korea’s computer server logs recorded multiple accesses from internet connections in northeastern China. Roy Barnhart and Michael Barnhart, North Korea experts at Mandiant, both told CNN that these log files show Chinese workers passing instructions on the anime project to their North Korean counterparts. He said that it is a possibility.
Roy said other computers in North Korea also appeared to be connected to the computer server, meaning there may have been people in North Korea as well as China who accessed the animation files.
Provided by: Stimson Center
A sketch that resembles Max’s character from the upcoming animated series “Iyanu: Child of Wonder.”
California-based Skybound Entertainment, which is producing “Invincible” for Amazon, said in a statement to CNN that it does not contract with Chinese or North Korean companies and that such companies will not produce “Invincible.” He said he did not know what was going on. Skybound Entertainment said it would look into the findings presented by CNN.
Skybound Entertainment spokeswoman Hannah Cosgrove said: “Our contracts specifically prohibit outsourcing to third parties without our express prior written consent, and such consent is It was never asked for and never allowed.” Cosgrove added that Skybound Entertainment “takes this matter very seriously” and has “begun an investigation with independent counsel to uncover the truth.”
Max declined to comment. Maryland-based Younique Studio, which co-produced the graphic novel series “Iyanu” on which the animated show is based, did not respond to requests for comment. Lion Forge Entertainment, the American company that produces the animated show “Iyanu,” declined to comment.
Lion Forge Entertainment has signed a production deal with a South Korea-based animation studio, sources told CNN. However, at the end of last year, Lion Forge discovered that the Korean studio had outsourced the animation production of “Iyanu” to another Korean company without further permission, according to people familiar with the matter. Lion Forge ended its relationship with the South Korean animation studio in January, according to people familiar with the matter.
The South Korean studio told Lion Forge that the work was outsourced only to South Korean companies and not to any North Korean entity, the person added.
After discovering the files, Roy shared them with his friend Martin Williams, a North Korea expert and senior fellow at the Stimson Center, who analyzed the files. Williams and his colleagues concluded that they appeared to be part of a business order.
“This all appears to be working-level edit files for these animations,” Williams said.
“North Korea has set up a number of software companies in China that act as a kind of front, sending information and sending work back to Pyongyang, where the work is done,” Williams told CNN.
The think tank added that it found no evidence to suggest that the U.S. company was aware of the activity. Editorial comments on the file were written in Chinese, so “contractual arrangements likely took place several levels downstream from the major producers,” said 38 North of the Stimson Center, which focuses on North Korea. the project said in a report released Monday.
Experts say the North Korean regime has long been obsessed with film studios and animation as a means of propaganda and a source of income. In the years following the division of the Korean peninsula after World War II, North Korea was more advanced than South Korea in the field of animation.
North Korea’s main animation studio is Pyongyang-based SEK Studio, which was founded in the 1950s and has signed contracts with various foreign companies over the years. In 2021, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned SEK Studios due to its ties to the North Korean regime.
“Appearing to be fueled by a desire for unfairly low-cost labor, foreign media companies continue to subcontract animation production to SEK Studios,” the Treasury Department said in a statement announcing the sanctions. . The studio employs “animation workers” from North Korea and China, the agency said.
Williams suspects that SEK Studios may be involved in the animation works discovered on the computer server, as it is the only entity in North Korea capable of handling this type of volume. .
Korean Central News Agency
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspects artillery training by the Korean People’s Army on March 7, 2024.
Hit by sanctions and cash-strapped, North Korea’s regime is relying on thousands of IT workers living abroad to bring in foreign currency, U.S. officials and private experts say.
Since the 2022 recommendation, FBI agents and State and Treasury officials have conducted briefings for corporate executives and followed up on leads about potential North Korean IT talent for U.S. companies. , has secretly sought to raise awareness of the North Korean insider threat.
Barnhart, the Mandiant researcher, said companies that employ North Korean IT workers risk being targeted by North Korean hackers because of the close ties between the two.
“We’re starting to see a lot more overlap between these IT workers and them. [North Korean hackers]” Barnhart told CNN.
A previous CNN investigation found that the founder of a California-based cryptocurrency startup unknowingly paid tens of thousands of dollars to a North Korean engineer. The entrepreneur said he was unaware of the situation until he was notified by the FBI.
Inside the international sting operation to catch North Korean crypto hackers
As for the recently discovered North Korean server, Mandiant has produced a report of its findings that the server appears to be hosting content from a US animation studio, and is available to government agencies including the FBI. Barnhart said.
The FBI declined to comment.
CNN has reached out to UN observers in New York and the North Korean embassy in London for comment.
A Treasury Department spokesperson told CNN that the agency does not comment on possible or hypothetical sanctions violations.
“The Treasury Department remains concerned about North Korea’s efforts to profit from its weapons programs, including through cybercrime and contractor abuse, and is committed to providing industry with the ability to evade sanctions,” the spokesperson said in a statement. I urge everyone to be wary of such attempts.”
Roy, an independent researcher, has spent nearly a decade investigating North Korea’s internet infrastructure from studios in Boston and elsewhere. He does so, he says, to fill an “information gap” that outsiders have about the East Asian country.
Roy said North Korea’s internet has just over 1,000 IP addresses, unique identifiers that allow computers to connect to the public internet. In the United States he has over 1.5 billion IP addresses.
The sketches reviewed by CNN would look right at home at any major animation studio in the world. There are superheroes with sharp jawlines and muscular features, and cartoonish figures in capes with tousled hair and piercing eyes.
Heinz Ins Fenkl, an expert on North Korean comics, said that anime and manga have been prominent in North Korean society since the founding of the country in 1948.
Currently, North Korean comics are sold in street markets in northeastern China, providing valuable income for the regime, he added.
“North Korea does a lot of the basic work for animation, so they have the technology,” Fencl said. “They spend a lot of energy and money keeping the technology up to date in their field.”
But some of North Korea’s recent advances in animation have been simply copied from Western production companies, Fencl said.
“That’s why you’ll see things like production sketches while an animation project is in progress. [someone] “He is not known to be a North Korean working at that studio,” he told CNN.
CNN’s Alex Marquardt and Mike Conte contributed to this report.
