North Korea picks about 200 of its brightest middle-school pupils each year and trains them to become state hackers, according to Reuters, published on Friday 6 November.

Defectors and analysts say the programme is more than a decade old. Selection begins at 11 or 12, when authorities choose about 150 to 200 children a year to study computer science. At 17, the strongest go to North Korea's best universities for screening, and only a chosen few enter the military's cyber unit as hackers.

"There is no other country grooming hackers like this, systematically searching for the smartest children, solely to turn them into operatives," said Kim Heung-kwang, a defector who trained hackers for the state before fleeing to South Korea in 2004. "Whether they want to be a hacker or not does not matter."

North Korea set up a cyber unit in 1998, and leader Kim Jong Un declared in 2013 that cyber warfare was, with nuclear weapons and missiles, an "all purpose sword" for the country. South Korea's National Intelligence Service estimated in 2024 that the North's cyberwarfare operations employ about 8,400 people.

Rewards for the hackers behind the Binance heist

The programme's graduates are blamed for the $6.3 billion Binance crypto heist, which the FBI and Binance attribute to North Korea and a group known as TraderTraitor. Pyongyang denies responsibility.

Top hackers are rewarded with a spacious Pyongyang apartment, large hard-currency payments and as much as 30 per cent of a heist's profits for their military unit, Reuters reported. Successful performers can also gain ruling-party membership and high-status marriages.

Those who do not become hackers are trained to produce software or apps for Western firms remotely. Former IT workers describe gruelling conditions, with working days over 10 hours, constant surveillance and monthly dollar-earning targets.