[Anchor]
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has pointed to North Korea as the culprit behind the hacking incident at Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. The total amount stolen is estimated at around 8.4 trillion won, and just the Bitcoin stolen alone is worth three times North Korea's total exports last year.
Reporter Bae Seong-jae has the details.
[Reporter]
On October 31 local time, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that North Korea was behind the theft of 6.3 billion dollars, approximately 8.4 trillion won, in cryptocurrency from Binance, the world's elite cryptocurrency exchange.
This officially confirms the suspicions raised by private firms since the early stages of the incident.
The FBI identified the North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor as the perpetrator.
TraderTraitor is known as an elite organization created under North Korea's intelligence agency about a decade ago with the goal of stealing virtual assets.
According to cryptocurrency-specialized media outlets and other sources, 18,270 Bitcoins were stolen this time, which is 2.3 times the amount held by the government of El Salvador, which has been accumulating Bitcoin at the national level.
Their value alone is about 1.4 billion dollars, or roughly 1.8 trillion won in Korean currency, which is about three times the scale of North Korea's merchandise exports last year.
The FBI stated that it has also detected signs of them converting the stolen assets mainly into Ethereum, anticipating further money laundering of this nature.
[Ari Redbord / Cryptocurrency Expert : North Korea will try to convert these assets from cryptocurrency to cash as quickly as possible to use them for securing weapons or purchasing supplies.]
North Korean hackers were also so meticulous that they immediately exchanged the stolen cryptocurrency into assets that cannot be frozen, escaping with about 2.4 billion dollars, or around 3 trillion won worth.
Binance stated that it has recovered or frozen about 3 billion dollars of the total stolen assets and is injecting its own funds to cover customer losses.
Regarding the FBI's announcement, U.S. President Trump stated, "If North Korea is behind this, we will discuss this issue with North Korea."
(Video Editing: Kim Ho-jin)
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