In a shared apartment in Dandong, a team of North Korean developers builds software for a Western company that has no idea it’s paying Pyongyang. In Vladivostok, another group operates under student visas, their earnings flowing through Russian bank accounts. In Laos, a front company teaches new recruits English before deploying them onto freelance job platforms.

All of these operatives are part of North Korea’s shadow IT workforce, a sanctions-evasion force that has embedded thousands of workers in companies worldwide, from animation studios working on Amazon and HBO series to firms handling sensitive defense-related projects