Kim Yo-jong denounces FBI claim linking North Korea to Binance hack as political provocation

North Korea has rejected a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation claim that it was behind a hacking incident involving Binance Holdings Ltd., calling the allegation a “stereotyped U.S. provocation.” For high-risk payments and crypto operators, the point is not the rhetoric; it is that U.S. attribution of major exchange breaches remains a live sanctions and compliance issue.

1. Kim Yo-jong, Director General of the North Korea Labor Party's Secretariat Department, said in a statement released through the Korean Central News Agency on the 3rd that the FBI was trying to brand North Korea as a “cyber crime state.” She called the U.S. claim “an absurd canard and nothing new.”
2. Her comments came after the FBI named North Korea on the 31st of last month as behind the hacking incident that stole $6 billion worth of cryptocurrency from Binance Holdings Ltd., described in the source as the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange.
3. Kim said the United States was misleading international opinion by making it appear that all cyber fraud activities around the world were North Korea’s doing. She framed that as a “grave political provocation” and accused Washington of trying to damage the international image of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
4. She also pointed to a statement from last year, when the current U.S. administration took office, saying it would confiscate illegally stolen cryptocurrency assets and build them into the nation's strategic reserve fund. Her argument was that tracing where recovered stolen crypto would end up could offer a clue about who was behind the hack.
5. Kim said North Korea was closely watching how the United States continues to stage provocations against the state and added that, in response to what she called an “extremely unpleasant and intolerably hostile attitude,” North Korea would have matters to reconsider from “various aspects.”