"North Korea is Behind It"…Helpless as 8 Trillion Won Vanishes

[Anchor]

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has pointed to North Korea as the culprit behind the astronomical cryptocurrency hacking incident at Binance, the world's largest virtual asset exchange. Even after detecting meticulous money laundering patterns following the hacking, Binance reportedly had no choice but to watch helplessly in terror.

Reporter Kim Minpyo has the details.

[Reporter]

On October 31 local time, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation stated that North Korea was behind the incident in which more than 6 billion dollars worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from Binance, the world's largest virtual asset exchange.

This officially confirms the suspicions raised by private firms regarding North Korea's involvement 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 established under North Korea's intelligence agency about a decade ago with the goal of stealing virtual assets.

The FBI stated that it has detected signs of them converting the stolen assets mainly into Ethereum and anticipates further money laundering of this kind.

[Ari Redbord / Cryptocurrency Expert: North Korea wants to convert these funds from cryptocurrency into cash as quickly as possible to use them for securing weapons or purchasing supplies.]

North Korean hackers were also methodical enough to immediately convert the stolen cryptocurrency into assets that cannot be frozen, escaping with 2.4 billion dollars, or about 3 trillion won worth of funds.

The Wall Street Journal reported that even after realizing the hacking had occurred, Binance could only watch in terror as assets drained from accounts.

Binance stated that it did not pass the hacking losses onto its customers, covering 95 percent of the losses with internal funds, and is resuming withdrawals step by step starting with major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BNB.

Regarding the FBI's announcement, U.S. President Trump stated, "If North Korea is behind this, we will discuss this matter with North Korea."

(Video Editing: Jeong Yong-hwa)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.