] North Korea is training around 100 computer hackers each
] year to boost its cyber-warfare capabilities, pushing the
] South to fortify its own computer security, a South
] Korean military official said on Friday.

The main reason this seems offbase to me is the "100 hackers each year" thing. I have a feeling tracking down 100 computers in North Korea is a hell of a challenge, let alone 100 hax0rs with clue. Not to mention a decent net connection for them to search out tools over, keep up to date on discovered sploits, etc.. The thing that is going to make a cracker a danger isn't a set selection of skills that the other 99 also have, but rather the ability to think on their feet and learn on the fly.. That takes time and experience. I see this situation being very hard to cultivate, as it would require their cracker-corps to be constantally working on their skills, finding new sploits, etc.. It would require access to many of the devices/software they are interested in hacking, which is going to be nearly impossible for them.. I immagine the resources for this all are very slim..

That number also leads to believe that their intent is not to have their hacker-corps working out of North Korea, but rather send them out of the country and have them work elsewhere. North Korea proper would likely be very easy to cut off from the rest of the world in the event of a conflict, rendering their hacker teams useless.. They would have to be stationed in many places outside North Korea to be useful.

Now, if North Korea had crackers spread out all over the globe, working toegether to form some l33t North Korea cracker-corps, this might be logical.. Otherwise, its very unlikely to exist, or be a real danger. Of course, that also implies that North Korea has their shit together, something I don't think is likely. Its more likely that they have 100 people in North Korea who are being called "hackers" and being "trained on hacking", even though most of them have never actually used a real computer for more then 5 min.

This is probably another case of North Korea trying to give the impression to South Korea (and everyone else) it is more dangerous then it actually is.. They have 4 skilled and loyal hax0r kiddies, and somehow it became "100 every year".. Don't they have 300 nukes aimed at the US right now? Heh. Two or three maybe. (And more on the way, but that's another story..)

There is also another option.. North Korea has zero to do with this, and South Korea is just trying too pump up some fear in order to get its people to take computer security more seriously.. Slammer did really take them for a spin. They have reason to be concerned.

CNN.com - N. Korean training hackers, Seoul says - May. 16, 2003