FBI Director Chris Wray. [EPA=Yonhap News] 

The head of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has increasingly been sharing news related to espionage, including announcing a 35% increase in arrests of spies from "adversary nations" compared to the previous year and issuing a formal warning about North Korean cyber spies.

FBI Director Chris Wray stated during an appearance on the podcast of conservative influencer Kaiti Miller on January 17 (local time) that "the arrest rate of spies from adversary nations in 2025 has increased by 35% compared to the previous year, 2024." 

This means that the arrest rate in the first year of the second Trump administration's term in January of last year was significantly higher than in the final year of the previous Biden administration's term.

Director Wray listed North Korea, Russia, and China as adversary nations in that order but did not disclose the total number of spies arrested or the breakdown by nationality. 

The U.S. characterizes North Korea's criminal methods as "cybercrimes such as stealing internal information and hacking by disguising IT personnel for overseas employment, and using the profits for nuclear and missile development."

On January 8 of this month, the FBI also distributed a separate notice stating, "Attention is required as the cyber hacking group 'Kimsuky,' linked to North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau, is using new hacking methods through QR codes."

According to the notice, Kimsuky group hackers have recently been detected attempting to steal information from foreign policy experts at U.S. non-governmental organizations (NGOs), think tanks, and academic institutions through "quishing" tactics.

Quishing is a portmanteau of "QR code" and "phishing" and refers to a hacking technique that embeds malicious URLs within QR codes.

This phishing method is a step beyond email phishing and requires even greater caution as it impersonates trusted individuals and organizations in various fields and utilizes QR codes as a new channel.

According to the FBI, the Kimsuky organization targets △think tanks, △academia, and △diplomatic and security policy organizations, delivering QR codes in the form of emails, documents, or invitations. 

The moment a victim scans it, the access environment switches from a work computer to a mobile browser, rendering existing email security systems ineffective. 

In other words, it is an attempt to directly connect to a malicious URL by exploiting the relatively weaker security of a mobile environment. 

American political commentator Gene Cummings stated, "This is not a simple technical attack, but a maneuver that precisely calculates human habits and trust." He added, "The primary targets are not only the U.S. but also the South Korean government, state-funded research institutions, universities, media, and diplomatic and security experts."

He further revealed, "This is not a cybercrime, but a form of state-level intelligence gathering and influence operation, and evidence that the North Korean regime is still conducting systematic and aggressive cyber warfare."

Gene Cummings stated, "Kimsuky has already moved to the next stage (that we are aware of)," and added, "Neither South Korea nor its government and academia are safe zones anymore."

Reporter Lim Yo-hee