Despite sanctions

How North Korea secretly streams itself into the living room

Some of the cartoons produced in North Korea also reach the West via detours.(Bild: Amazon Prime Video, stock.adobe.com, Krone KREATIV)

North Korea - very little officially leaks out of the politically isolated and heavily sanctioned country, and certainly not to the West. At least that's what people thought. But it turns out that some of North Korea's approximately 26 million inhabitants are secretly and quietly supplying production companies with cartoons, which then end up in people's living rooms via streaming giants.

A misconfigured cloud server provides a fascinating insight into the world of North Korean animation outsourcing and shows how foreign companies may be unintentionally employing North Korean companies for information technology projects.