How North Korea launders its cash: Hong Kong is North Korea’s preferred spot for money laundering, a report by CNN’s Joshua Berlinger showed. The hermit state uses a handful of front companies to get access to the global financial system and cover up much of its trade, from selling coal and fuel to exporting weapons and to buy goods and services. North Korea’s problem is that it needs to trade internationally in USD or EUR “but has to figure out ways to do it when none of its partners want to be the node where North Korea and the US overlap in the international financial system.” The UN Panel of Experts on North Korea outlined how the country utilizes the system in Hong Kong to gain access to markets. Panel coordinator Hugh Griffiths explains that “it should come as no surprise that Hong Kong is featured so prominently … It’s the closest major international financial center to North Korea. It’s the closest major offshore international financial center to North Korea. And historically, it’s been a center of global and regional trade … and with fewer questions asked and looser regulation than, say, Beijing.”

Want more? The New York Times had an excellent piece out on the weekend about how North Korea has gone from hacking joke to an emerging power that generated about USD 1 bn from cyberattacks and cybercrime last year. That’s about one-third the value of the isolated nation’s total exports. Former New York Times Cairo bureau chief David Kirkpatrick shares the byline on the story. Read: The World Once Laughed at North Korean Cyberpower. No More.