It’s been this way for a long time. SEK Studio, North Korea’s production company, worked on The Simpsons Movie, Futurama and Avatar: The Last Airbender. (They did not work on Disney films, that’s just a rumor.)
The Simpsons gig is of course beautifully referenced to in Banksy’s couch gag.
Clerks had a bit on the Korean animation houses too…
That was in 2000. 10 years before the Banksy gag on the Simpsons.
Bear is driving! How can that be?!
I loved the Clerks cartoon and I still quote this all the time. All in the name of Sexy Randal the Pharaoh Wizard!
“Nobody called you that…”
“That one guy did!”
That was the most deeply hilarious and fucked up thing I’ve seen.
“Play ball!”
The revelation comes from a trove of documents recently discovered by US researchers inside a computer server housed in North Korea.
New double speak word drop.
If they’d consider not being such unfriendly shitbirds they could actually properly participate with the rest of the world.
But, like many people, they’re afraid of change, I guess.
“Unknowingly”
I’m sure their private shareholders are absolutely thrilled with slave labor making them a few extra cents per share.
It’s insane what we allow people to do to people in the name of “just business” profiteering.
CEOs of the offenders at the time, and anyone who signed off on this, should go to prison. Instead, at most (and likely nothing at all), their companies will receive a fine far less than what they saved using slave labor, which means they’ll keep doing similar things.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It’s unclear how the files ended up in this tightly controlled portion of the internet, but the researchers who analyzed them told CNN they appear to be the result of work that was unknowingly outsourced to North Korean workers.
Roy found a new North Korean website that outside visitors didn’t need a password to access, unlocking a trove of animation sketches, and shared them with the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank.
The discovery raises questions about the ability of US tech and creative arts companies to control their supply chains and avoid work that could inadvertently violate sanctions banning countries from doing business with North Korea.
“Seemingly fueled by the desire for unreasonably low-cost labor, foreign media companies continue to subcontract animation work to SEK Studio,” the Treasury Department said in a statement announcing the sanctions.
Battered by sanctions and strapped for cash, the North Korean regime has turned to thousands of IT workers living abroad to bring in hard currency, according to US officials and private experts.
“Treasury remains concerned about North Korean efforts to generate revenue for their weapons programs, including through cybercrime and the abuse of contractors, and urges industry to be vigilant against any attempts to evade sanctions,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
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