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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

Nigerian Farms Battle Traffic, Developers in Downtown Abuja

Developers fill in farmland despite regulations protecting these areas as rare green spaces in Abuja. OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT / AFP
Developers fill in farmland despite regulations protecting these areas as rare green spaces in Abuja. OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT / AFP
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Nigerian Farms Battle Traffic, Developers in Downtown Abuja

Developers fill in farmland despite regulations protecting these areas as rare green spaces in Abuja. OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT / AFP
Developers fill in farmland despite regulations protecting these areas as rare green spaces in Abuja. OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT / AFP

Under the din of traffic from the highway bridge that cuts over his fields, Bala Haruna inspects corn, cassava and okra on his family farm.

A pump pulls up water from a nearby stream and is diverted through trenches dug through cropland wedged between four-lane roads -- fields which were here long before the nearby hotel, the imposing national mosque or any of the high-rises that make up downtown Abuja were even dreamed up.

"There were no buildings here," Haruna, 42, told AFP, reminiscing over his childhood as birds chirped and frogs croaked.

The urban farms dotting Nigeria's capital show the limits of the top-down management the planned city is known for -- oases scattered around pockmarked downtown that has long expanded outward faster than it has filled in.

They owe much of their existence to the fact that they lie in hard-to-develop gulches along creek beds. Even roads built through them over the years tended to be elevated highway overpasses.

That fragile balancing act, however, is increasingly under threat, as developers fill in farmland despite regulations protecting these areas as rare green spaces in a city known for concrete sprawl.

On the other side of the overpass, the future has arrived: the vegetation abruptly stops and temperatures suddenly rise over flattened fields razed by construction crews.

Local farmers said the people who took the land three years ago provided no documentation and only gave the eight of them 300,000 naira to split -- a sum worth only $190 today after years of rampant inflation.

Much of the farmland in and around downtown is supposed to be a municipal green space, with neither farms nor buildings on it.

But enforcement of the decades-old Abuja master plan is ripe with abuse and lack of enforcement, said Ismail Nuhu, urban governance researcher who did his PhD on the capital's urban planning.

Adding to the sense of precarity is that the land, on paper, belongs to the government.

"Politicians still use it to grab lands, just to say, 'Oh, according to the master plan, this is not to be here'," no matter what the document actually says, he told AFP, adding that, technically, even the presidential villa is not located where it is supposed to be.

Nyesom Wike, the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, which includes Abuja, recently told reporters he would "enforce" the 70s-era master plan by building roads and compensating and evicting settlements that stand in the way.

FCT officials including Wike's spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

Urbanizing country, not enough jobs

The farms have provided steady employment -- a lifeline for some as the rapidly urbanizing country fails to produce enough jobs. A recent opening for 10,000 government jobs saw 450,000 applicants, according to local media.

"Having a green space... in a very thick, populated city like Abuja does a lot of good," said retiree Malik Kuje Guni, who started farming three years ago to supplement his pension.

While tens of thousands of residents pass by the farms each day without second thought, Guni, when he was working as a civil servant, would often come down to visit, enjoying the shade and fresh air.

Now tilling a potato plot of his own, "I can come down, work, sweat," the 63-year-old said. "I have hope something will come out of it."

A few blocks over, squat, informal houses made of wood and sheet metal give way to a field of sugarcane, corn and banana trees. Glass-paneled highrises, half-finished construction and the imposing Bank of Industry tower above.

The crops give way to land cleared by developers a few months ago, some of whom pushed into Godwin Iwok's field and destroyed his banana trees.

Iwok, who quit his security job 22 years ago to make more money as a farmer, has had parts of his fields destroyed twice in the past two years, neither time with compensation.

To Guni, the farms represent the city's rural heritage. Despite decades of government promises to relocate Nigeria's capital from the crowded, congested mega-city of Lagos, the move only occurred in 1991.

But neither Iwok, 65, nor Haruna want their children to continue their increasingly precarious line of work.

"I wouldn't want my children to stand under the sun as I did," Iwok told AFP.

"I only use what I'm getting here... to make sure my children go to school."