#Cryptocurrency harmony series#

Kim Jong Un and his daughter attended a military parade celebrating North Korean army ís founding anniversary where North Korea's latest weapons were displayed.

Though analysts tell CNN that most of the stolen $100 million remains out of reach in cryptocurrency and other assets controlled by North Korea, it was the type of seizure that the US and its allies will need to prevent big paydays for Pyongyang. The team in Pangyo helped seize a little more than $1 million that day. The spies and investigators pounced, flagging the transaction to US law enforcement officials standing by to freeze the money.

#Cryptocurrency harmony series#

When the moment came, the spies and sleuths - working out of a government office in a city, Pangyo, known as South Korea’s Silicon Valley - would have only a few minutes to help seize the money before it could be laundered to safety through a series of accounts and rendered untouchable.įinally, in late January, the hackers moved a fraction of their loot to a cryptocurrency account pegged to the dollar, temporarily relinquishing control of it. A team of South Korean spies and American private investigators quietly gathered at the South Korean intelligence service in January, just days after North Korea fired three ballistic missiles into the sea.įor months, they’d been tracking $100 million stolen from a California cryptocurrency firm named Harmony, waiting for North Korean hackers to move the stolen crypto into accounts that could eventually be converted to dollars or Chinese yuan, hard currency that could fund the country’s illegal missile program.