US, South Korea, and Japan Discuss North Korean Crypto Thefts at Trilateral Meeting
National security officials discussed North Korea’s crypto thefts and other efforts to work on its nuclear and missile programs with the governments of the United States, South Korea and Japan, the White House announced Friday evening.
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Republic of Korea National Security Advisor Cho Tae-Yong, and Japanese National Security Advisor Takeo Akiba met in Seoul, South Korea, to discuss various issues, including the Democratic People’s Republic Korea (DPRK, the official). Name for North Korea) and its ongoing weapons of mass destruction program, the White House said in a statement.
“The National Security Advisers reviewed progress on a variety of trilateral initiatives, including the commitment to consultation on regional crises, the sharing of ballistic missile defense data, and our joint efforts to address the DPRK’s use of cryptocurrencies to generate revenue “to respond to its illegal weapons of mass destruction programs,” the report said.
The three officials also discussed North Korea’s relations with Russia, the reading said.
North Korea’s theft of billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies from various projects in the industry has attracted the attention of various government bodies. The US government claimed that the Lazarus Group, a notorious hacking company with ties to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, stole over $600 million from Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge last year.
The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) has sanctioned several mixers that were allegedly used by North Korean hackers to transfer stolen funds. Just last week, OFAC added two crypto addresses linked to the Sinbad mixer. Police officers from several nations also jointly seized Sinbad’s website.
OFAC has also banned various wallet addresses and individuals from the dollar-based global financial system, claiming that this similarly aided North Korea’s efforts to launder stolen funds to support its weapons program.
Most famously, OFAC listed privacy tool Tornado Cash as a sanctioned entity, claiming more than $100 million in stolen cryptocurrencies flowed through the mixing service.
Two of the project’s developers, Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev, are currently facing charges in the US and the Netherlands for their work on Tornado Cash. A third developer, Roman Semenov, has been charged with money laundering and sanctions violations but has not yet been arrested.
Storm is due to stand trial next year.
