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North Koreans May Have Helped Create Western Cartoons, Report Says 

A cartoon soldier is depicted on part of a warning sign on barbed wire on the Chinese side of the border between Russia, China and North Korea near the town of Hunchun, China, November 24, 2017. (Reuters) 
A cartoon soldier is depicted on part of a warning sign on barbed wire on the Chinese side of the border between Russia, China and North Korea near the town of Hunchun, China, November 24, 2017. (Reuters) 
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North Koreans May Have Helped Create Western Cartoons, Report Says 

A cartoon soldier is depicted on part of a warning sign on barbed wire on the Chinese side of the border between Russia, China and North Korea near the town of Hunchun, China, November 24, 2017. (Reuters) 
A cartoon soldier is depicted on part of a warning sign on barbed wire on the Chinese side of the border between Russia, China and North Korea near the town of Hunchun, China, November 24, 2017. (Reuters) 

North Korean animators may have helped create popular television cartoons for big Western firms, including Amazon and HBO Max, despite international sanctions on North Korea, a research report has found.

Researchers discovered files on a North Korean internet server that included animations, written instructions and comments that appear to relate to projects under production for the foreign studios, the report from the Washington-based 38 North project released on Monday said.

Among those projects were "Invincible," an Amazon Original animated series produced by California-based Skybound Entertainment and "Iyanu, Child of Wonder," an anime about a superhero created by Maryland-based YouNeek Studios and due to air this year on HBO Max.

US sanctions prohibit almost all commercial activity between US citizens and North Korean entities.

Michael Barnhart, who works on North Korea issues at Mandiant, a computer security company owned by Google, and worked with 38 North on the project, said there was nothing to indicate the Western companies had knowledge of the arrangements, which appeared to involve subcontracting of work to China.

"There's no way that anyone could have known it, except for the operational security error which exposed it," he said.

Amazon spokespersons declined comment and referred Reuters to Skybound Entertainment.

Skybound said it had no knowledge of any North Korean companies working on its animation, but took the allegations seriously and had initiated a thorough internal review to verify and rectify any potential issues.

"We have also notified the proper authorities and are cooperating with all appropriate bodies," its head of corporate communications Hannah Cosgrove said.

HBO Max and YouNeek did not respond to requests for comment.

The report said that after discovering the files, two researchers kept watch on the server and observed traffic throughout January.

"Each day, a new batch of files would appear that included instructions for animation work and the results of that day's work," the report said.

"Often the files contained editing comments and instructions in Chinese, presumably written by the production company, along with a translation of those instructions into Korean," it said.

"This suggests a go-between was responsible for relaying information between the production companies and the animators."

The report said the identity of the person, or persons, uploading the files could not be determined, nor of the North Korean entity involved.

WESTERN ANIMATION PROJECTS

North Korea's premier animation house is the Pyongyang-based April 26 Animation Studio, also known as SEK Studio, which has worked in the past on international projects. In 2016, the US Treasury Department designated it a North Korean state-owned enterprise and put it under sanctions.

The report noted that in 2021 and 2022 the US government also imposed sanctions on Chinese companies that have worked with the studio or acted as a go-between.

38 North said files found on the server related to a range of projects, including Season 3 of "Invincible." The report said a document on the server carried the name of the series and "Viltruminte Pants LLC," part of the Skybound group.

Working with Mandiant, the researchers examined access logs for the server, which included three internet addresses in China.

Two of the latter were registered to China's Liaoning Province, which neighbors North Korea and where there are many North Korean-operated businesses and North Korean IT workers.

Mandiant's Barnhart told Reuters he assessed "with high confidence" that the animation contracts had been outsourced to North Korea by a front company, apparently in China.

China's Washington embassy said Beijing strictly implemented UN prohibitions on dealings with North Korea but added that sanctions were not a solution to the North Korea issue. North Korea's UN mission did not respond to a request for comment.

BETTER PAY IN CHINA

Choi Seong-guk, a North Korean defector web cartoonist who worked at SEK Studio between 1996 and 2002, told Reuters the studio had a team assigned for joint work with foreign studios.

Choi, who quit the state-run studio over low pay, said some fellow North Korean cartoonists also left and went to work overseas, mostly in China, where they were construction workers on paper but in reality created animation for Chinese clients.

"By doing that in China, they are paid $100 per month ... compared to $1 back home," he said.

In 2022, the US Departments of State and Treasury and the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued an advisory warning businesses about the risk of inadvertently hiring North Korean IT workers and said this could put them in violation of US and UN sanctions.

A spokesperson for the US Treasury said it does not comment on "potential investigations or sanctions violations as general practice" but North Korea's efforts to generate revenue for its weapons programs through cybercrime and abuse of contractors was a concern.

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Varieties

Researchers Document Huge Drop in African Elephants in a Half Century

Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
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Researchers Document Huge Drop in African Elephants in a Half Century

Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo

African elephants are Earth's largest land animals, remarkable mammals that are very intelligent and highly social. They also are in peril. Fresh evidence of this comes in a study that documents alarming population declines at numerous sites across the continent over about a half century.

Researchers unveiled on Monday what they called the most comprehensive assessment of the status of the two African elephant species - the savanna elephant and forest elephant - using data on population surveys conducted at 475 sites in 37 countries from 1964 through 2016.

The savanna elephant populations fell by about 70% on average at the surveyed sites and the forest elephant populations dropped by about 90% on average at the surveyed sites, with poaching and habitat loss the main drivers. All told, there was a 77% population decrease on average at the various surveyed sites, spanning both species, Reuters reported.

Elephants vanished at some sites while their populations increased in other places thanks to conservation efforts.

"A lot of the lost populations won't come back, and many low-density populations face continued pressures. We likely will lose more populations going forward," said George Wittemyer, a Colorado State University professor of wildlife conservation and chair of the scientific board of the conservation group Save the Elephants, who helped lead the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Poaching typically involves people killing elephants for their tusks, which are sold illegally on an international black market driven mostly by ivory demand in China and other parts of Asia. Agricultural expansion is the top factor in habitat loss.

The forest elephant population is estimated to be about a third that of savanna elephants. Poaching has affected forest elephants disproportionately and has ravaged populations of both species in northern and eastern Africa.

"We have lost a number of elephant populations across many countries, but the northern Sahel region of Africa - for example in Mali, Chad and Nigeria - has been particularly hard hit. High pressure and limited protection have culminated in populations being extirpated," Wittemyer said.

But in southern Africa, elephant populations rose at 42% of the surveyed sites.

"We have seen real success in a number of places across Africa, but particularly in southern Africa, with strong growth in populations in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia. For populations showing positive trends, we have had active stewardship and management by the governments or outside groups that have taken on a management role," Wittemyer said.

The study did not track a continent-wide population tally because the various surveys employed different methodologies over different time frames to estimate local elephant population density, making a unified head count impossible. Instead, it assessed population trends at each of the surveyed sites.

A population estimate by conservationists conducted separately from this study put the two species combined at between 415,000 and 540,000 elephants as of 2016, the last year of the study period. It remains the most recent comprehensive continent-wide estimate.

"The loss of large mammals is a significant ecological issue for Africa and the planet," said conservation ecologist and study co-author Dave Balfour, a research associate in the Centre for African Conservation Ecology at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.

The world's third extant elephant species, the slightly smaller Asian elephant, faces its own population crisis, with similar factors at play as in Africa.

Of African elephants, Wittemyer said, "While the trends are not good, it is important to recognize the successes we have had and continue to have. Learning how and where we can be successful in conserving elephants is as important as recognizing the severity of the decline they have experienced."

Wittemyer added of these elephants: "Not only one of the most sentient and intelligent species we share the planet with, but also an incredibly important part of ecosystems in Africa that structures the balance between forest and grasslands, serves as a critical disperser of seeds, and is a species on which a multitude of other species depend on for survival."