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North Korean animation outsourcing for Amazon, HBO Max series
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- johnea 3y agoIsn't North Korea working on something like cartoon animation, a good thing?
- markus_zhang 3y agoBut then they get paid. We don't want them get paid.
- evan_ 3y agoand to clarify- the "they" who gets paid is probably not the person doing the animating
- markus_zhang 3y agoYeah the majority of the $$$ probably goes to we know who.
- ses1984 3y agoMaybe, but what if it’s basically slave labor and the money goes to the regime?
- fy20 3y agoAre you describing Europe? Our taxes definitely feel like they are going to the "regime", making politicians and the wealthy richer, not the everyday worker.
- ses1984 3y agoDo European nations have concentration camps of political prisoners and their innocent family members, today? Taxes go to the regime, anywhere, that’s the definition of taxes. You get benefits from them like infrastructure. Payment for animation from North Korea goes 100% to Kim so he can fund things like his harem.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
- 1123581321 3y agoGenerally, 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?
- jsiepkes 3y agoSo 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.
- 1123581321 3y agoYes, of course, but I was asking what level of due diligence is expected to verify that the chain does not violate sanctions. In other words, when a problem like this is discovered, the US State Department will assign more blame to the company if their attempts to avoid violating sanctions fell below a threshold; what is that threshold for the arts industry.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago> Yes, of course, but I was asking what level of due diligence is expected to verify that the chain does not violate sanctions. The same as you were employing them directly.
- StressedDev 3y agoYou should ask a qualified lawyer. No one on this forum is going to know the right answer.
- toasterlovin 3y agoYeah, but "outsource it to a bunch of companies who then outsource it" is literally how the economy works. The most mundane product you can imagine has a network of upstream suppliers that is essentially incomprehensible in its complexity.
- peppertree 3y agoThe real question is does North Korean let their animators work remote in a LOCL area.
- hawkice 3y agoNot sure "cost of living" exists in NK the same way it does in the rest of the world.
- beaeglebeachh 3y agoHonestly 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.
- bobthepanda 3y agoNorth Korea is no stranger to famine, so if you want food it's probably not the best place to go. Even for tourists who they are trying to extract lots of hard currency from, the food quality is notoriously poor.
- josephstalinOk 3y agoWhat a strange thing to say. No country is stranger to famines. Nowadays the country has a normal and modern economy.
- RajT88 3y agoLet's game it out. You go there to work remotely. Food/labor/rest are super cheap. Everyone is starving to death there, to the point where meth is casually used by most people to stave off hunger pangs. Not to mention, if they decide they may just get some fun leverage out of a foreign hostage, they may just decide to claim you committed a crime and beat you half (or 3/4's) to death. This is just the news stories I can recall off the top of my head as well...
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- godelski 3y agoSeems 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 https://i.imgur.com/ngexngJ.png
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- koito17 3y ago@dang is a no-op. You should send an e-mail to hn@ycombinator.com. I'm writing one as I write this comment.
- godelski 3y ago@dang is a signifier that makes it easier for dang to visually see his name (or search and differentiate from the more common word) in comments. I was writing an email but I won't send if you got this covered. Thanks
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- tiahura 3y agoSo it looks like Season 3 of Invincible is a go.
- candiddevmike 3y agoIt's a little ironic considering part of season 2 has some meta commentary on how hard it is to create animated shows. Guess the easy way is to indirectly outsource it to NK!
- GordonS 3y agoAnd even more ironic given it was the story that made season 2 such a disappointing bore-fest - the animation was superb!
- epiccoleman 3y agoThat season definitely was a little slow, but it left me wanting more, so I read through the comics. Based on the quality of what the show has done so far and of the source material I'm still excited for the next season whenever it finally comes
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- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoSeems 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.
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- LarsDu88 3y agoWhen 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 3y agoOur 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.
- jsheard 3y agoThey didn't do themselves any favors by putting out a nicely animated teaser for season 2, which was made by a studio that otherwise didn't work on season 2 at all (they were busy animating Captain Laserhawk for Netflix) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjDOpHuUppU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjDOpHuUppU
- Rapzid 3y agoI mean, that shaky cam execution is not so great. It feels super unnatural.
- vundercind 3y agoI’ve only seen season 1 but it’s barely even animation. It looks like “motion comics”. I enjoyed it anyway (I liked the comic, and this is playing out like a “second draft” with some stuff tightened up, so that’s really cool to see) but it’s one of the worst-looking animated anythings I’ve seen. It’s on par with the bottom half of amateur Flash animation in the ‘00s.
- LarsDu88 3y agoGreat writing. Great voice acting. Why the hell are all the non-pivotal scenes barely animated? Like in one episode an alien spaceship blows up and a static gif of an alien goes spinning around. Just compare that to the animation in Xmen '97 which has a similar episode count.
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- karaterobot 3y agoThe 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.
- geraldwhen 3y agoNot really. Outsourcing and then claiming ignorance is not a defense against financing North Korea.
- josephstalinOk 3y agoIs financing North Korea bad? I understand that is illegal for American companies because it is an enemy of the Empire, but I applaud those willing to break the law to help the enemies of the Empire.
- Arrath 3y agoClassic 'two steps removed' syndrome. "I told X to get it done. What X did to get it done is not my fault/responsibility."
- beaeglebeachh 3y agoIf it's possible to accidentally pay north Korea that should be the fault of whatever financial institution (which is held to far more KYC and AML than animators) caused that to happen, presuming it went through the financial system. HBO likely had no mens rea beyond cash flow out animation flow in. If I can't trust the bank to know more about the UBO of some rando after KYC what the hell are we doing this for?
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- vajrabum 3y ago@dang looks like we have a troll who's creating multiple accounts.
- pronoiac 3y ago@'s don't do anything here. I've emailed the mods.
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- wesselbindt 3y agoThey were animating stuff? For money? The thing that hits me the most about this, I think, is the depravity of it all.
- tchbnl 3y agoThe issue is the money is piped into the NK regime. The problem isn't that a North Korean did the work, but that it was done by a state-owned firm.
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- darkwater 3y ago> 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Cao_de_Ben%C3%B3s
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- duxup 3y agoThe 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?
- constantcrying 3y agoI 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?
- acdha 3y agoYou can put someone at your partner’s location, have a trusted third party audit them, etc. Companies don’t like to spend the money but that’s true of every safeguard against misconduct and society is almost always better off for the investment.
- dchftcs 3y agoThe 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.
- duxup 3y agoThat's very telling as far as how outsourcing changes incentives. My experience with outsourcing has always been it becomes a contract game / poor incentives based around contract metrics and in the end a complete waste of money.
- iamleppert 3y agoThis more than anything says why we need SORA AI now, and to replace these animators with AI. We cannot be allow to have reputable US firms engaging with a foreign adversary. Replacing these workers with AI should do the trick in this compliance snafu.
- tchbnl 3y agoAnd of course here's the "AI solves everything" comment.
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- dangerboysteve 3y agoLet's not forget the use of pirated software to produce the animations.
- tumsfestival 3y agoOh no, not the pirated software!!
- eleveriven 3y agoSometimes there is no other way...
- constantcrying 3y agoIf 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 3y agoIt's really easy though, actually, isn't it? Just don't toss problems over the fence to China. i.e. don't outsource things.
- constantcrying 3y agoSure. You can avoid all of this by doing the work in house or even just working with companies bound by the same laws as you are. Obviously management doesn't see it your way though.
- s1artibartfast 3y agothat is indeed an easy solution, but that doesn't mean it is a good solution, or even better than no solution.
- Bayart 3y ago> i.e. don't outsource things. i.e. don't be efficient. Outsourcing always gets a bad reputation, but holistically it's the best way for the greatest number.
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- acdha 3y ago> 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.
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- the_real_cher 3y agoWhy 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.
- VS1999 3y agoThis is normal behavior. We feed our allies and starve our enemies.
- unobatbayar 3y agoMore like invading, and starving innocent countries under pretext. The enemies are consuming more than ever before in history.
- npteljes 3y agoThat's one of the approaches indeed. I think it has merit, since trade relations create dependency, and dependency can be leveraged to enact change in the other's behavior. At the end of the day though, politics is complex, and it's also tied to the people who participate in it. So while many people can suffer as result of a systemic change, the people who brought that to action might have different incentives, might not had the foresight, might have weighed the pros and cons and calculated with it, might sacrifice short-term good for a longer good... might be corrupt even. TL;DR it's complicated, and it probably has an official, and a real reason as well.
- chiggsy 3y agoRecent American efforts at regime change have fared poorly in hindsight. Attempted during the fall of the USSR, led directly to the oligarchs, and eventually Putin. Deposing Saddam left destroyed a middle class secular nation, who cheerfully began the ethnic cleansing, so that Iraq is now Kurds, Sunni and majority Shiites, none and turned Iran into a regional power by eliminating Iraq, as well as Afghanistan. Our man Musharraf, a loyal ally? Ditched him too, and the ISI showed its gratitude by rearming the Taliban. We got Gaddafi! Turns out he was burying enough people migrating from Africa to be a firm deterrent. Those people flooded into Europe, and the liberal democracies we allegedly want to nourish in other lands were pushed to the far right. Now Germany is beginning to arm itself, and France is following. Japan also, which will agitate the Koreas and China greatly. So the risk here is replacing the Pax Americana, fantastically lucrative for American by the way, with the spectre of proliferation, which the Pax had blocked fairly successfully. One wonders where (ugh) Kissinger's Realpolitik would have led us. Regardless, what we do know is that the Norks are hardly pro-american after years of indoctrination. >It's not like theyr'e happy about a dictator running the country doing international crazy stuff and oppressing them. As are we. It'd be way worse too if not for The Leader's clearsighted vision in acquiring nuclear capability, against our best efforts.
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- nerdjon 3y agoI 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.
- mujjingun 3y ago[dead]