Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
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
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
