Ha Tae-keung said on Tuesday that he and other lawmakers were briefed on the hack by the National Intelligence Service of South Korea, the country’s spy agency.
It is not clear when the alleged attack took place. The NIS declined to comment and Pyongyang did not publicly acknowledge the alleged theft, although North Korean diplomats generally deny any allegations of wrongdoing.
Most of the attacks were blocked, Microsoft said in a statement at the time.
North Korea has invested heavily in recent years in offensive cyber capabilities, allowing the impoverished country to make money, attack enemies and pursue the Kim Jong Un regime’s priorities at relatively minimal expense.
It appears that the Kim regime has shifted its cyber capabilities to its efforts to prevent a pandemic and obtain a vaccine.
“North Koreans are taking a comprehensive approach,” said Dr. Kee B. Park, director of the Korean Health Policy Project at Harvard Medical School and the North American Program at the Korean American Medical Association. “They are trying everything – making their own, perhaps through GAVI (an organization involved in COVAX), perhaps through bilateral channels.”
North Korea’s top priority since the pandemic broke out last year has been preventing the coronavirus from overloading its dilapidated health infrastructure. Pyongyang voluntarily broke most of its meager ties to the outside world in 2020 to prevent an influx of Covid-19, including cutting off almost all trade with Beijing – a North Korean economic lifeline to prevent its people from passing hungry.
Still, Kim, who is overweight and reportedly leads an unhealthy lifestyle, was confident enough to appear in public without a mask on several occasions during the pandemic.
He and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, were photographed watching a show without a mask on Tuesday. It was the first time Ri appeared in North Korean state media in over a year. Ha, the South Korean lawmaker, said South Korean intelligence believed she was acting as a precaution due to the pandemic.
The usefulness of data
Park, from Harvard Medical School, said that on a visit to North Korea he saw medical professionals giving presentations demonstrating the know-how and technology to manipulate and unite genes. However, the country may not be able to take the next crucial steps in vaccine development, he said.
With so few probable cases in North Korea, there are probably not enough infected people in the country to adequately test the effectiveness of a nationally manufactured vaccine, Park said. Conducting trials abroad, as China did, would probably be very expensive and could break UN sanctions that prevent joint ventures with the Kim regime.
Then there is the question of whether North Korea has the capacity to manufacture a vaccine on such a large scale. Pyongyang usually depends on international donors for other vaccines, such as the one that treats tuberculosis.
Finally, it is not clear how useful Pfizer’s data would be for North Korea. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first vaccine approved for emergency use to employ MRNA technology, something that only a handful of pharmaceutical companies have been able to achieve. Those who have achieved this have spent billions doing so, according to Park.
“MRNA is cutting edge technology,” said Park. “Whether or not North Korea has this kind of technology, I don’t know, but … I would be really surprised if they were able to do that. It’s something that even many developed countries are struggling with.”
CNN’s Will Ripley, Paula Hancocks and Amanda Sealy contributed to this report.