Reuters: North Korea Selects and Trains Hackers From Age 11, Units Can Take Up to 30% of Stolen Proceeds

November 6 — Reuters reports that North Korea has built a hacker training system that has been running for more than a decade: each year about 150 to 200 students around 11 or 12 years old are selected at the middle school level to study computer science; at 17, the best of them enter top universities for further screening, and in the end only a few join the military's cyber unit. The report, citing defectors, said that after a successful attack the hackers' military unit can receive up to 30% of the stolen proceeds in US dollar shares, and top hackers can also receive housing in Pyongyang and large foreign-currency rewards. According to a 2024 estimate by South Korea's National Intelligence Service, North Korea has about 8,400 cyber warfare personnel.