from an Email to JZ;

The future, or rather the current state of the internet is bleak here in Korea, what with the recent ddos attacks and anticipation of a third “wave” coming soon. Amid speculation that North Korea is behind the attacks, a North Korean specialist said that the cyber attacks were conducted by a posse of North Korean cyber specialists who went to China to plant the evil seeds in June and return in time for the anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s death.

The funny (or perhaps sad) thing about this is that South Koreans didn’t even bat an eye when N. Korea fired those missiles or detonated what could have been a nuclear bomb, but this cyber attack has people terrified. Of course, the government is afraid that their “special technologies” and “secret information” will be leaked, but normal people (kind of including me) are concerned because the bank sites were down. All of Korea’s banks are wired and Internet/mobile banking is quite the norm. It kind of gets me worried sometimes because my assets are not physical, and I wonder what would happen if all electronic records were to be erased completely.

I know Americans don’t really care about what happens in other parts of the world, but because the attacks included several U.S. sites, some sites like Nasdaq.com have blocked access from Korea and are currently inaccessible (reported it on Herdict!)

Update: Munhwa Ilbo,  one of the six big daily newspapers in Korea, has a scoop quoting Ha Tae-kyong, head of North Korean Radio, which is a South Korean-based short-wave radio service for people in North Korea. [In North Korea, broadcasting is controlled by the government, so one can imagine the lack of diversity in programming] According to the article, Ha says that a high-ranking North Korean government official told him that Kim Jung-woon, the alleged heir of the current leader Kim Jong Il, initiated a posse of less than 10 N. Korean cyber specialists to carry out this cyber attack operation. Of course, the North  had to send its agents to China because it doesn’t have a good enough infrastructure to do it on its own. From big areas like Beijing, Shanghai, and Dalian,the cyber attackers routed their viruses through servers in other countries including Singapore and Indonesia.

Ha said that the cyber terrorism was in line with the North’s nuclear experiments and missile shootings, and part of a strategy to solidify Jung-woon as the heir. It was not a coincidence that this year is the 15th anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s death. (Il-sung is father of Jong-Il, grandfather of Jung-woon)