In recent years, North Koreans have found remote jobs at hundreds of Western companies pretending to be from somewhere else, using fake resumes and sometimes with the help of American partners.
It’s been a big problem for years, as North Korea remains under heavy sanctions from the US and European governments over the regime’s banned nuclear weapons program, which means companies aren’t allowed to hire North Koreans.
Over time, someone realized there might be a way to expose potential North Koreans during the interview process: Ask the suspected con artist to insult the country’s dictator Kim Jong Un, since insulting him is illegal in the country and can lead to harsh punishments. Although this is a well-known strategy, we rarely see actual examples in action in real time.
That’s exactly what happened in this video, which went viral on X. The clip shows a job interview during a video call where the recruiter asks the applicant to say “Kim Jong Un is a fat ugly pig.”
The request seems to throw off the candidate, who becomes visibly uncomfortable, pretends not to understand the question, and then simply walks out of the interview.
It is important to note that this trick does not always work. Some North Korean fake IT workers, particularly those living in China or Russia, are not always under the same strict scrutiny as hackers within North Korea’s borders, and thus these tactics are not always effective strategies on their own.
