Two weeks ago, rumours spread online that Kim Jong Un had died. He answered them in the way North Korean leaders prefer: by being seen everywhere at once. On October 24 he crossed into China. On October 29 he toured a drone exhibition and oversaw the launch of about ten ballistic missiles. That same evening, hackers drained about $6.3 billion from the crypto exchange Binance, the largest theft in the history of the industry, and the FBI has since blamed a North Korean unit. All the while, his army moved artillery to visible positions along a border that has grown more dangerous since a mine blast in September.
A week of signals
The rumours, which claimed without evidence that Kim had been taken to a hospital in Beijing, spread on X on October 18 and 19, according to NK News. Kim reappeared at a clothing and shoe exhibition with his daughter, whom South Korea’s spy agency believes is his likely heir.
Four days later came the trip to Dandong. Kim met Wang Huning, China’s fourth ranking official, at a banquet held at Xi Jinping’s direction, paid tribute at a memorial to Chinese soldiers who fought in the Korean War and pledged to advance a relationship “forged in blood.” He returned home across the newly opened New Yalu River Bridge, a structure completed in 2014 that had stood unused for more than a decade.
Then, on October 29, Kim visited an exhibition of attack drones at the Wonsan Kalma resort and called for “absolute superiority in the drone technology,” according to state media cited by the Associated Press. The same day, South Korea detected about ten short range ballistic missiles fired from Wonsan, the North’s first ballistic launch in 17 days.
The drone lesson from Ukraine
The drone push is the most concrete military development of the week. Analysts quoted by the AP believe North Korean troops sent to support Russia’s war against Ukraine have likely gained drone warfare experience, which Pyongyang is now trying to scale up at home. We traced that partnership in our piece on the Kim and Russia alliance.
Drones fit North Korea’s situation. They are cheap compared with fighter jets, hard for sanctions to block, and well suited to harassing a heavily fortified border. For a regime that cannot match South Korea’s conventional forces, mass produced attack drones offer a way to raise the cost of any conflict without new nuclear tests.
Paying for it: the Binance heist
Weapons need money, and North Korea’s most reliable source of hard currency is theft. Late on October 29, attackers moved roughly $6.3 billion out of Binance wallets across ten blockchains, most of it within about 20 minutes, according to Binance and the blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs. That is more than four times the previous record, the $1.5 billion taken from the exchange Bybit in February 2025.
TRM Labs and Chainalysis both assessed with high confidence that the attack was carried out by TraderTraitor, a North Korean unit linked to the Lazarus Group. On October 31 the FBI issued an alert attributing the theft to the same unit, published wallet addresses linked to it and said the hackers had begun converting the funds into Ethereum. Binance says the intrusion began with a compromised engineer’s laptop and that it will cover all losses; about $3 billion has been frozen, largely by the stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle.
The timing matters for the argument of this piece. A regime under some of the world’s heaviest sanctions announced a drone expansion on the same day its hackers allegedly pulled off the biggest heist in crypto history. Even if half the haul stays frozen, the remainder would be a large sum next to an economy whose legal exports are tightly restricted.
A border without markers
The military signals land on an already tense frontier. On September 21, a mine blast in the Demilitarized Zone wounded three South Korean soldiers. A joint South Korean and UN Command investigation concluded on October 5 that North Korean forces had planted two mines about a year earlier, in violation of the 1953 Armistice Agreement. Pyongyang denies responsibility, called the blast staged and has threatened retaliation.
Both Koreas have now written to the UN Security Council accusing each other. NK News noted that North Korean domestic media did not mention the standoff at all during Kim’s busy week, a sign the regime is managing the crisis for external audiences rather than mobilising its own public around it.
Leverage before talks
The common thread is bargaining power. Talks with Washington have been frozen since Kim’s diplomacy with Donald Trump collapsed in 2019. Trump has said he wants to restart them, and an APEC summit in China this month had fuelled speculation about a meeting, which Trump himself played down in mid October.
Seen in that light, the China trip broadens Kim’s options after years of leaning on Vladimir Putin. Yet Kim met Wang Huning rather than Xi Jinping, and Cha Du hyeon of the Asan Institute argued that this makes close coordination with Beijing on US talks hard to imagine. The trip, he suggested, may be a message to Washington to show sincerity. The weapons tests send the same message with more noise: whatever a deal looks like, it will be priced against a growing arsenal. The Binance theft cuts the other way, giving Washington a fresh reason to tighten pressure rather than ease it.
The other side of the argument
Not everyone reads the week as a calculated strategy. One view holds that the drone push and missile launches are driven mainly by military modernisation that would happen regardless of diplomacy, and that reading them as bargaining chips gives Pyongyang too much credit for coordination.
A second view sees the China trip as weakness rather than strength. Kim travelled to a border town and met the number four official, not the head of state. If Beijing were eager to embrace him, critics argue, the meeting would have happened in Beijing with Xi.
On the Binance theft, attribution so far rests on blockchain analytics firms and an FBI alert. Binance itself has said its investigation “has not attributed responsibility to any individual,” and North Korea routinely denies involvement in hacking. How much of the stolen money can actually be laundered and reach the state is unknown.
Finally, the DMZ dispute has two sides that are hard to verify independently. North Korea has called the blast staged, and while the UN Command findings support Seoul’s account, the absence of most boundary markers means the line itself is contested in places. The Korea Times has noted that the dispute puts Seoul’s own outreach to the North at risk, which raises the question of whether pressing for an apology serves South Korea’s wider goals.
What to watch
First, the APEC summit in China this month. Any sign of contact between American and North Korean officials on the sidelines would show whether the leverage strategy is working.
Second, the border. Loudspeaker broadcasts, which Pyongyang has threatened to resume, or new weapons deployments near the DMZ would raise the risk of a clash that neither side fully controls.
Third, the money trail from Binance. How much of the roughly $3.3 billion that was not frozen gets laundered, and whether Washington answers with new sanctions on the networks that move it, will shape how much the heist is worth to Pyongyang.
Fourth, the drone programme itself. Evidence of serial production, rather than exhibition pieces, would mark a real shift in the military balance on the peninsula.
Sources
- Arab News (AP): North Korea’s Kim calls for rapid expansion of drone technology and observes weapons tests
- TimesLIVE (Reuters): Kim urges North Korea drone dominance amid border tensions
- Morung Express: North Korea leader vows to advance ties with China during surprise Dandong visit
- Al Jazeera: Binance says $6.3bn stolen in biggest crypto heist in history: What we know
- The Register: FBI pins $6.3B Binance crypto heist on North Korean hackers
- The Star (Reuters): North Korean hackers linked to crypto thefts among world’s best, experts say
- NK News: Kim Jong Un keeps up busy schedule amid growing inter Korean border tensions
- NK News: Kim Jong Un appears at clothing expo after latest internet rumors on death
- Al Jazeera: South Korea considers steps to force North Korea apology for DMZ mine blast
- The Korea Times: DMZ mine blast puts Seoul’s NK outreach at risk
- Korea JoongAng Daily: North Korea calls DMZ mine blast staged
- Spotlight Nepal: North Korea and South Korea accuse each other at UN over mine blast