"A total of 6,800 hackers — some 1,700 experts and 5,100 supportive members — have been assigned to hacking and other cyber provocations," a senior military officer told reporters, requesting anonymity.
The latest figure is 900 more than what Seoul's Military Cyber Command told the National Assembly in October, Yonhap news agency reported Sunday.
Pyongyang dismissed the charge as “groundless slander, saying that linking it to the hacking of Sony Pictures' computers was "another fabrication” targeting the country.
It denounced the film as "undisguised sponsoring of terrorism, as well as an act of war" in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and demanded a joint investigation into the incident with the United States.
"My country publicly declared that it would follow international norms banning hacking and piracy," a senior North Korean diplomat said in New York.
Meanwhile, worried by growing security threats online, South Korea has decided to drop its long-held defensive tactics in cyber warfare and instead initiate proactive operations.
To better guard against enemies' online infiltrations, it is pushing to establish a new team in charge of cyber operations under the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) while increasing its personnel from the current 600 to 1,000, the Yonhap report said.
