In mid-June, a few days before Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his counterpart Kim Jong-un in North Korea, Google Cloud reported on a wave of cyberattacks in Brazil by the Pukchong hacker group, also known as UNC4899, linked to the North Korean government, which targeted financial services and cryptocurrency companies. In 2023, still in the Latin American country, hackers at the service of Pyongyang had already hit aerospace, defense, and government agencies to spy on and extort their victims.
According to Google Cloud analysts, Pyongyang’s cyberattacks in Brazil have increased while Russian cyberactivity, more focused on the Ukraine conflict, decreased. In 2023, a report by Chainalysis, a U.S. blockchain analytics firm, indicated that since at least 2021, North Korean hackers have been coordinating activities with their Russian counterparts, in a cyberwar that could find fertile ground in Latin America.
“It should not be forgotten that Russia in Latin America is interested in destroying the traditional Western democratic model and cyberwarfare is an essential part of this project. Russia is promoting cyberwarfare in Latin America against the rule of law and democratic norms,” Douglas Farah, president of IBI Consultants and an expert on Russian influence in Latin America, told Diálogo.
Pyongyang’s illicit activities
North Korean cyberattacks, also in Latin America, serve as a source of self-financing for the Pyongyang government and its military programs. This strategy also includes the illicit activities of its diplomats, such as the smuggling of cigars from Cuba and rare species from throughout the region.
“North Korea requires its diplomatic corps to be self-sufficient,” Benjamin R. Young, a North Korea expert and adjunct professor of national security and emergency preparedness at Virginia Commonwealth University, tells Diálogo. “Its members are expected to raise funds themselves and send the ‘revolutionary’ dues to Pyongyang. This gives rise to all sorts of illicit activities,” Young told Diálogo.
The Google Cloud report also warned that Korean spies could infiltrate Brazil under the pretense of working for local tech companies, a strategy already used in other parts of the world. “We note the potential for this to pose a future risk, given the growing startup ecosystem in Brazil, the historical activity of North Korean threat actors in Brazil, and the magnitude of this problem,” the report says.
Russia and North Korea, same interests
Both Moscow and Pyongyang have maintained relations with several Latin American countries since the Cold War, but the conflict in Ukraine has also changed priorities in this part of the world.
In his book Guns, Guerrillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World, Young explains how North Korea has for years engaged with the region “to forge a national identity as a member of an anti-imperialist world community,” highlighting the visits of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro to the Asian country, in 1960 and 1986 respectively.
“However, Kim Jong-un has moved away from his grandfather’s third world policy and now cultivates a foreign policy based on rapprochement with the great powers, particularly the Russian Federation,” Young told Diálogo.
Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, and Cuba are the only countries in the region that have a permanent embassy in North Korea, while Nicaragua formalized the resumption of diplomatic relations with Pyongyang in June. These are the same countries in which Russia is expanding its power of influence along with Iran and China.
United in disinformation
In the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement Putin and Kim Jong-un signed in June, which outlines the key points of the new cooperation between both countries, Article 20 is devoted to disinformation. It provides, according to the version released by Moscow, for the development of “extensive media cooperation between the two countries […] to disseminate unbiased information about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation, and closer coordination to counter disinformation and aggressive information campaigns.”
Although Russia already has a very strong disinformation framework in Latin America, for Farah “this agreement can be used in the region to clean up North Korea’s image and reinforce the narrative of unjust Western sanctions against developing countries” such as Russia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, and North Korea. “The grievances are shared, and it is a strong narrative line for Russia.”
On the occasion of Putin’s visit to Pyongyang, Russian media outlets that carry Moscow’s propaganda in Latin America in Spanish, such as Sputnik Mundo, devoted news specials on the importance of North Korea looking again at Latin America through the prism of “a multipolar world.” In addition, some Russian propaganda facilitators in the region described this new alliance as the possibility of “creating new hot spots for the United States and its allies.”
The U.S. State Department’s Center for Global Engagement report, Exporting Pro-Kremlin Disinformation: the case of Nova Resistência in Brazil, highlights how members of the Brazilian group linked to Moscow’s disinformation, Nova Resistência (New Resistance), had met with North Korean actors. Even the Soyuz Institute, founded in 2021 in Brazil under the aegis of Rossotrudnichestvo, the Russian Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation, sanctioned by the European Union, counts among its Russian teachers the Brazilian president of the Center for Songun Policy Studies. According to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo, this center founded in 2017 in a room at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro is a vehicle for Pyongyang’s propaganda, mainly military. Russian propaganda is also shared on its social networks.
“It’s common for Russia, Iran, and Bolivarian regimes to share platforms, messages, and the same propaganda facilitators. Actualidad RT, Telesur, and Hispan TV share influencers, platforms, and messages,” explains Farah, who is also the author of the report Russian Influence Campaigns in Latin America. “Now it will be interesting to see how and if North Korea is incorporated, although it should be remembered that the country has little external media presence.”
Along with embassies in the region, North Korea’s Committee for Cultural Affairs with Foreign Countries has a Latin America department which, emulating the institution that the defunct Soviet Union had, compiles, researches and maintains contacts with the region.
In addition, the Korea Friendship Association, founded in 2000 by the Spaniard Alejandro Cao de Benós de Les y Pérez, is present in several countries, including Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico. In 2022, the FBI issued an arrest warrant for Cao de Benós on charges of helping the North Korean regime evade sanctions through cryptocurrencies.
There is no shortage of official visits and webinars, such as the one held in March 2023 in Mexico to mark the 70th anniversary of the Korean War armistice. In February 2024, a delegation from the North Korean General Federation of Trade Unions attended a meeting of the World Federation of Trade Unions in Brazil. In April, North Korea also hosted a webinar for Brazilian parties and organizations on the 112th anniversary of Kim II Sung’s birth. Among the participants was the top leadership of the Communist Party of Brazil, which had been among the initiators of a Brazil-North Korea parliamentary friendship group in June 2018.
Brazil, which is the only Latin American country in the BRICS, is strategic for North Korea, which last May expressed interest in joining the group. “North Korea has extensive experience and significant networks for sanctions evasion and cyber warfare. This is its added value to any group it joins. The Pyongyang government has little real economic influence on a global or regional scale. However, the potential risk is that it will significantly strengthen sanctions evasion networks in Latin America, including nuclear proliferation,” Farah told Diálogo.
The Cuba case
According to a recent report by the U.S. think tank Global Americans, to counter the expansion of anti-Western actors such as North Korea in Latin America, “on the regional chessboard South Korea can be a horse for the United States,” something that can be seen in Cuba.
“The most significant recent development for North Korea was the loss of Cuba, as Havana recently established diplomatic relations with South Korea,” Young told Diálogo. “As the last bastion of Marxism-Leninism in Latin America, this decision by Cuba to establish diplomatic relations with Seoul appeared as betrayal to the North Korean government.”
The news that a North Korean diplomat stationed on the island defected to South Korea in recent months, just when his government had asked him to block negotiations between Seoul and Havana, confirms the important role South Korea can play in Latin America in defense of democratic values.
