North Korean IT workers have infiltrated the Fortune 500

This part is genius:

    > Nowadays, Leggio told Fortune he won’t even set up an interview with a candidate who seems promising on paper unless they agree to one final step.

    “Say something negative about Kim Jong Un,” Leggio tells potential job candidates, referring to the third-generation authoritarian Supreme Leader of North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Through research, Leggio learned insulting the DPRK’s Supreme Leader is forbidden, and North Korean citizens could face serious punishment for showing anything less than reverence.

    “The first time I ever did it, the person started freaking out and cursing,” said Leggio.

    The job seeker subsequently blocked Leggio across all social media platforms. Now Leggio makes the same request before every single interview. Other startups and founders he knows are asking the same thing of job seekers, he said.

I love it. That’s genius. Though I wonder if they’d be a special exception: You can talk bad about Kim if American Evil Capitalists force you as long as you get in and bring in the dough.

I am afraid they are a lot more cynical than we give them credit, though.

I don’t think that’s going to work for long. A typical defender/attacker dynamic at play.

I wonder how effective the propaganda apparatus in inside North Korea really. And also… I wonder if there’s a bit of a gap of stuff that is, like, not something that a westerner would be aware of.

Like if the person says “the carrot harvest was terrible last year and the uniforms are very itchy, it’s like he’s correctly but annoyingly prioritizing other things” they might be a spy.

I mean that is a silly example but you get the idea hopefully.

Yeah, and if you ask someone if they are an undercover cop, they have to tell you.

This doesn't pass the smell test.

Who is the attacker and who is the defender? Can the candidate be sure that the person asking that question isn’t secret police?

I wonder if "double talk" work here. After all this is similar to "what is your weakness" interview question, but the subject is Kim jong un instead of you

I believe gp’s point is that whether the recruiter is secret police doesn’t change much if NK decides to let its citizen do it in interviews.

Russia/Ukraine has similar gotcha screening question: "Crimea belongs to ... whom?"

pro-Russians will try to weasel and twist themselves into pretzel justifying Crimea annexation. Pro-Ukraine will have the opposite answer.

similar thing in USA: try to force any US public figure to condemn genocide in Gaza or apartheid in Palestine... and you will be deported, canceled, and debunked on the spot.

or try to ask any US public figure to condemn any of the US wars, or the way US public was led into supporting them and do the math on who picked up the tab of the war...

> I wonder how effective the propaganda apparatus in inside North Korea really.

Elites I am guessing can probably afford to be a bit cynical in private. And people interviewing at these companies are probably closer to being elites than peasants. But if they are monitored, showing any dislike or disloyalty in public is probably not something they can risk. Even if it means tricking the “dirty American capitalists”. There would have to be an unofficial nod from above “you can do it, just don’t overdoit”. Say “the harvest was bad” but say nothing about the uniform being itchy. Our dear leader sowed them with his own hands!

It’s not like the “candidate” is doing that on their own. They’re most likely part of some branch of the military with a chain of command, a bunch of reports to fill, etc. So doing that in a pre-approved way is not unimaginable. Because, if they can pull this off (and the Lazarus hacks) one thing they’re not is dumb.

Or you can keep the first question or a variant like "Did Russia invade Ukraine?" in the the USA too.

That's because you are assuming the DPRK's culture is like western culture. It isn't. They have secret police everywhere and if you say anything that isn't positive about the state, you will get disappeared and your whole family probably will too. This is understood at a very young age. They would need have to have a group of people isolated from this practice since birth for a couple of generations before they can pass this test.

https://libertyinnorthkorea.org/learn-nk-challenges

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/what-happens-to-you...

> “The first time I ever did it, the person started freaking out and cursing,” said Leggio.

That one weird trick to get the North Korean NPC to malfunction!

But I’m sure that the NPCs who honestly believed that the North Koreans honestly believed that they found a unicorn will think this is both hilarious and completely true.

You’re comparing politicans to regular people. Politicans have a vested interest in saying very specific things (in public) in order to maintain their myriad of alliances. Regular people that you accost in the street can say whatever they like, lie if it is convenient, if it furthers their own goals. Yes, Eastern Europeans have the ability to lie and aren’t bots programmed by Zelensky/Putin.[1]

[1] Not that they will necessarily believe or be on the same page as what the government says but we can stop here.