UK University pays North Korean students £56,000 for hacking knowledge

A British university handed tens of thousands of pounds to North Korean students so they could learn about computer hacking in the UK.

Two students from the secretive state were given £28,000 bursaries by London's University of Westminster to study on a IT course which includes a module on computer security.

Details of their UK training emerged as Kim Jong-Un's regime ratcheted up the rhetoric in the wake of claims it hacked Sony because it disliked a film the company was due to release.

The two students are thought to be the children of powerful figures in the pariah state's ruling elite.

They came from the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a western-backed, all-male institution in North Korea's capital, where senior politicians and generals send their sons. 

They were sent to Britain to study an MSc in post-graduate electronic, network and computer engineering.

As part of the deal, their flights, accommodation and course fees were covered by the university, which raised the money from the fees of other overseas students.

The course includes 'techniques to secure computer networks, and critically evaluates them in the light of a variety of types of attacks', The Telegraph reported.

A spokesman for Westminster University told the newspaper: 'The scholarship with PUST has been undertaken for a number of years, although we have not awarded any such scholarships to students in the current academic year.

'The scholarships are assessed on academic merit and entry into the UK is undertaken through the standard Home Office and Immigration processes.'

It comes after it emerged the UK government is funding places for more than 40 North Korean students to study media and the internet.

The Foreign Office, which is funding that scheme but has no part in the University of Westminster course, said: 'It is just one part of our critical engagement to try to improve the lives of those who live in North Korea.'

North Korea has poured resources into a sophisticated cyber-warfare wing of its military, which it calls 'Bureau 121'.

Defectors have said the Bureau is staffed by some of the most talented computer experts in the state and is part of an elite spy agency run by the army.

Jang Se-Yul, who studied at North Korea's military college for computer science before escaping to the south, said: 'For them, the strongest weapon is cyber. In North Korea, it's called the Secret War.

FBI officials have explicitly linked recent cyber-attack on Sony - which was about to release The Interview, a film about North Korea - to the country's regime.

North Korea hit back at the claims yesterday, saying in a statement: 'Nothing is a more serious miscalculation than guessing that just a single movie production company is the target of this counteraction.

'Our target is all the citadels of the US imperialists who earned the bitterest grudge of all Koreans.

'The army and people of the DPRK are fully ready to stand in confrontation with the US in all war spaces including cyber warfare space to blow up those citadels.' Culled