One of my favorite strange news stories of the day. One of. Damn the world is a weird place.
Anyway, it seems that word of China’s goldfarming scheme has spread into other Asian nations, and may now be used to fuel terrorist cells.
Last Spring, the New York Times reported about a group of prisoners in China who were forced to play MMOs day in and day out, under supervision of guards, in order to goldfarm, develop accounts, sell said accounts, and hack user data, on games that were being played in the US. Supposedly, the 30 prisoners earned, over a couple years, about $6 million dollars in ill-gotten US funds. Those funds were then funneled into the pro-Communist shadow organization “Office 39”.
This sounds like the plot to the worst James Bond movie of all time. But wait, there’s more…
The Chinese gold-farming plot was really of no concern. Does it suck that people are shoveling more hard-earned US bucks out of the local economy? Sure, but $6 Million is really pretty small potatoes compared to things like major US businesses sending hundreds of millions into China for a cheaper labor force. Also, Office 39, if it exists, is probably an extension of the Chinese government, government of a country already pretty much funded by bootleg products and cyber misdemeanors (and, like, coal mining). Long story short, no one really gave a shit. Human interest story at best.
But now, it seems, the guidelines and ‘bot programs that China used to perpetuate their little extortion racket may have been sold to other countries, and that has people concerned. In particular, South Korea is concerned that the programs may have been sold to North Korea, who then implemented it in sleeper cells in South Korea. If that’s the case, then South Korea’s rampant and notorious gaming community may be exploited to earn money for North Korea’s nuclear program.
With tensions across the borders, well, South Korea certainly doesn’t want to be responsible for funding the weapons of their own destruction. Their government is currently investigating.
How much of this is just paranoia? No idea. But it really makes you think…
