North Korean animation outsourcing for Amazon, HBO Max series

[karaterobot]

The HN headline is more clickbaitey than the original article, which has a different headline and goes out if its way to point out that Amazon and HBO are likely not the ones doing the outsourcing to North Korea.

> There is no evidence to suggest that the companies identified in the images had any knowledge that a part of their project had been subcontracted to North Korean animators. In fact, as the editing comments on all the files, including those related to US-based animations, were written in Chinese, it is likely that the contracting arrangement was several steps downstream from the major producers.

[exhilaration]

But that's the most interesting part of the article - that Amazon and HBO projects are being worked on by NORTH KOREAN workers!!! I totally agree with the HN headline and I'm glad it got me to click and read the entire article.

[constantcrying]

I see nothing wrong with the headline. It accurately reflects what happened.

That it was unintentional should be quite obvious, anything else would have been a major scandal.

[Waterluvian]

I wish that all people who exist in the business world would learn to appreciate that levels of indirection do not absolve anyone of wrongdoing. The law might give them a pass but that doesn’t make them innocent.

[rangerelf]

It doesn't matter if it was intentional or not, the headline represents exactly what happened.

[bcherry]

there's a difference between "click bait" (a misleading title specifically crafted to drive instinctual interest but which is not an accurate summation of the content) and titles accurately describing something truly interesting or surprising with more details inside. This is a case of the latter

(and whatever the opposite of "click bait" is, that's how I'd describe the original title!)

[wnevets]

> he HN headline is more clickbaitey than the original article, which has a different headline and goes out if its way to point out that Amazon and HBO are likely not the ones doing the outsourcing to North Korea

That is the beauty of the subcontractor shell game and one of the top reasons why companies do it, no one has to take responsibility.

[geraldwhen]

Not really. Outsourcing and then claiming ignorance is not a defense against financing North Korea.

[duxup]

The few times I was involved in some outsourcing the outsourcing company was contractually obliged to actually be the one doing the work. Not that folks might not cheat and get away with it, but there were financial implications and a somewhat close working relationship that meant that ... it would have been hard to fake.

In this case does the original company just not care at all?

[dchftcs]

The subcontracting situation reminds me of a news article about someone in China hiring a hitman, the hitman then subcontracted to another hitman, who then subcontracted to another, then another, then another. Each hitman was offered half the money of the upstream. The last hitman defected and informed the target.

[constantcrying]

I would be surprised if the same wasn't the case here. Any half competent legal department would at least have it be part of their contract that the subcontractor can't outsource to parties with whom the contracting party is not allowed to cooperate.

But how do you verify who does the work? Contracts are nice and all, but how do you make sure they are followed?

[darkwater]

> but among those that were not VPN-related was an IP address in Spain and three in China

I wonder if the IP in Spain was related to Alejandro Cao de Benós

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Cao_de_Ben%C3%B3s

[LarsDu88]

When I saw the title, I immediately thought of the show "Invincible" which had abysmal animation, and lo and behold, its right there are the top of the list.

[Rinzler89]

Our of curiosity why did you think Invincible had abysmal animation? Which is ironic since in the last seasons they even broke the fourth wall and did a tongue in cheek poke at their audience who criticize their animation quality explaining how they're under crunch and what techniques they use to cut corners. Quite clever actually.

Didn't think they were covering up their North Korean animators though lol.

[booleandilemma]

I felt that way watching season 1 but I was drawn in by the great story regardless.

[constantcrying]

If you are outsourcing over the entire globe things like this tend to happen. There is very little you can actually do to verify how the work you require really gets done, especially if the format is purely digital and there is no physical process you could monitor.

Companies building things in China have been caught in that trap multiple times and somewhere down the line the work was allegedly done by highly mistreated populations, potentially in slave like conditions. Certainly no company would want this to happen, as it is obviously a major PR disaster, but it is just very hard to oversee.

[iaaan]

It's really easy though, actually, isn't it? Just don't toss problems over the fence to China. i.e. don't outsource things.

[acdha]

> If you are outsourcing over the entire globe things like this tend to happen. There is very little you can actually do to verify how the work you require really gets done

There’s very little you can do at minimal cost. They could have on-site auditors or collocated employees, but that cuts into the margins. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing: each poorly-monitored subcontractor is a security risk and likely hiding labor law or environmental violations so an outcome of less outsourcing to China would be a net-win.

[peppertree]

The real question is does North Korean let their animators work remote in a LOCL area.

[hawkice]

Not sure "cost of living" exists in NK the same way it does in the rest of the world.

[gwbas1c]

The economics of where you live are very different in a communist (Or whatever NK calls itself now) state. I would assume that the people with these jobs don't have an American-style commute.

[beaeglebeachh]

Honestly if N Korea had a cheap/low-barrier remote visa it might be attractive. I would imagine having an oppressive authoritarian regime looking at you as a prime tax slave might mean none of the prols would risk getting their head chopped off to mess with you. Meanwhile labor/rent/food gotta be hella cheap.

[nerdjon]

I genuinly don't understand why North Korea and China have such a... "good"?... relationship.

Since this seems like an open secret, idk it just boggles my mind. Like I constantly see articles about it happening, but I have yet to see anything about why it is the way it is.

Obviously cheap labor is one thing, but I wouldn't think even China can ignore the threat of North Korea working on missiles?

It also makes me wonder, if the people writing these comments know that they are working with people from North Korea or if they just assume its another company.

[dangerboysteve]

Let's not forget the use of pirated software to produce the animations.

[1123581321]

Generally, how far downstream does the US State Department expect companies to vet vendors for sanctions violation? Due diligence this many layers deep is expensive, especially if hostile (investigative work to proactively discover dishonest sourcing reports.) I would think it would vary by industry--e.g. animation is obviously less stringent than medical devices so would have fewer reporting and certification structures already set up. Does anyone have experience dealing with this?

[colechristensen]

The entire chain all the way down is sanctioned, the US can and will climb up and down that chain to punish sanctions violations. A company like Disney will have to have a Sanctions Compliance Program and like any other compliance regime, there are standards, external auditors, etc. to make sure enough is being done, and "enough" can be a bit of a moving target. If you get caught having sanctioned suppliers, those standards and auditing get kicked up a notch, if you did a really bad job maybe fines or criminal charges.

There isn't ever a sense of "I'm doing enough and therefore the sanctions violations happening are no longer my fault". It's somewhat up to you to determine your risk and tailor your compliance program to address them and to adjust if you're ever wrong.

How guilty you are is a function of how good a job the state department thinks you're doing trying to avoid sanctions violations.

[jsiepkes]

So all that's required would then just be to outsource it to a bunch of companies who then outsource it and then claim you have: "no knowledge"?

You're the one outsourcing, so it's your responsibility. The entire chain.

[johnea]

Isn't North Korea working on something like cartoon animation, a good thing?

[the_real_cher]

Why is the USA sanctioning the citizens of North Korea?

It's not like theyre happy about a dictator running the country doing international crazy stuff and oppressing them.

I feel like we should be supporting any capitalistic effort they make so that they can build up resources to combat their dictator from within.

[tiahura]

So it looks like Season 3 of Invincible is a go.

[godelski]

Seems like a difficult problem to solve. It shows the importance of paying close attention. NK has shown to be quite good at bypassing sanctions but it seems that the link is almost always through China. It would seem that the best way to go about this would be through stricter negotiations with them, since they are already acting as a significant intermediary. Either they know about this or the great firewall is not so great (I suspect a bit of both).

Edit: Interesting to see that this particular thread is getting heavy traffic and attacked. I'm not sure I've seen this happen on HN before, at least not a front page post. @Dang, I guess we can add a signup filter to prevent similar usernames being generated within a timeframe, since presumably these come from different IPs. Should be a simple regex filter and provide some warning system? Anyone else know?

https://i.imgur.com/ngexngJ.png

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Seems like this thread is being DDoSed (maybe by the Norks).

> video interviews

From what I hear, the live deepfakes are getting good enough to make these near worthless.