The Big Story

North Korea Stole Your Job

For years, North Korea has been secretly placing young IT workers inside Western companies. With AI, their schemes are now more devious—and effective—than ever.
Portrait of Simon Wijckmans
Simon Wijckmans was flooded with suspicious applicants for a developer job at his company—and concocted a plan to thwart them.Photograph: Darrell Jackson

On paper, the first candidate looked perfect. Thomas was from rural Tennessee and had studied computer science at the University of Missouri. His résumé said he’d been a professional programmer for eight years, and he’d breezed through a preliminary coding test. All of this was excellent news for Thomas’ prospective boss, Simon Wijckmans, founder of the web security startup C.Side. The 27-year-old Belgian was based in London but was looking for ambitious, fully remote coders.

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