Good grief—what was initially the Arbtrium freezing of North Korean hackers’ funds has now taken an even more dramatic turn. A U.S. federal court in New York issued a ruling ordering Arbtrium to compensate a group of Americans who have been persecuted by North Korea 🤣.

The background is that over the past several decades, North Korea has faced class-action lawsuits brought by many people with U.S. citizenship due to acts such as terrorism and illegal detention and kidnapping. However, the North Korean government has never proactively paid any compensation. So the plaintiffs, on a global scale, have been searching for assets belonging to North Korea and then requesting the U.S. government to seize them for compensation.

And there were already many successful cases before this—for example, most famously in 2017, when American student Otto was traveling in North Korea. He was arrested for stealing a poster and ultimately died tragically. After his parents sued North Korea and won, a U.S. court ordered North Korea to pay $500 million. But North Korea ignored the ruling. In the following years, the U.S. government intercepted a large North Korean cargo ship, put the ship up for auction, and then handed the proceeds over to his parents.