BloombergBusinessweek May 4, 2020siteinitsfirstyear,occasionallyoverwhelmingthelimited
bandwidthCaodeBenóscouldaffordonhismonthlybudget
of€20.Hisworkalsoattractedmediaattention,especially
afterU.S.journalistslearnedwhowasbehindthejankyNorth
Koreanwebsitethathadjustappearedintheworldoneday.
BythetimeCaodeBenósreturnedtoPyongyangin 2001
witha groupof 20 “delegates”fromtheKFA,hesayshisorgani-
zationhadthousandsofmembers;it nowhasmorethan16,000
across 120 countries.Still,heachedtobemorethana friend.
CaodeBenóswantedtobe“partoftheproject,”hesays,and
offeredtomovetoNorthKoreaandjointhearmy.Officials
theretoldhimthecountryhadplentyofsoldiers.Whatit didn’t
havewasa Europeanculturalenvoy.Hewasdisappointedbut
sawthelogic.“Iwilldowhatthecountryneedsmetodo,
whichis internationalrelations,”hesays.“Iwillsacrificemyself
inthecapitalistjungleandfightmyway.”
OnFeb.16,2002,KimJongIl gaveCaodeBenóshisofficial
appointment.“Theonlynon-Koreanworkingforthegovern-
ment,”hesays,withpride.“Firstandonlyinhistory.”ao de Benós is sometimes portrayed as a glorified tour
guide—the man you call to book a trip to Pyongyang—but
“my work is not tourism,” he says. “My work is to bring VIPs.”He did not arrange visits by former presidents Bill Clinton
and Jimmy Carter—or, for that matter, by Dennis Rodman,
the eccentric former basketball star. Those came through the
UN mission, and Cao de Benós is fine with that. Rodman was
a “hugeheadache,”hesays.
ButhedidorganizeNorthKorea’sfirstcryptocurrency
conference. For a country banished from the global banking
system, crypto has obvious appeal. The gathering was held
in April 2019 at the glittering Pyongyang Sci-Tech Complex—
which looks, from above, like an atom—and was open to
anyone who wanted to apply for an invitation, except for jour-
nalistsandresidentsofSouthKorea,Japan,andIsrael.
Eightforeignersattended,includingItalianinformation-
security specialist Fabio Pietrosanti. He says the two-day event
was strange: The English talks were translated into Korean with
a delay, forcing speakers to pause after every line, and partici-
pants “were not allowed to interact with a single North Korean.”
Prominent American crypto specialist Virgil Griffith was
another guest. Griffith flew home to Singapore with official
statesouvenirs—patrioticpostersandknickknacks—and“went
straighttothe[U.S.]embassytosay,‘I havebeentoNorth
Korea,andI giveyousomegifts,’” Cao de Benós tells me,
breaking into a grin. The decision was unwise, in his opinion.
On Nov. 28, three weeks after my visit to Spain, Griffith was
arrested in Los Angeles and charged with violating U.S. sanc-
tions for advising North Korea on bitcoin mining. He faces
20 years in prison and has pleaded not guilty.
Pietrosantihada morefruitfultrip.He’dbeenlooking
forcheaptechnicaltalenttobuildanopen-sourcemedical-
software tool (legal, under UN sanctions), and Cao de Benós
helped him set up meetings. Shortly thereafter, Pietrosanti
paid €7,100 (about $7,700) for four months of design work
by four programmers. “I can’t say that they are super-high-
quality, but they were much better than many Indians I’ve
worked with,” he says.
What impressed him most is that the programmers are
able to work despite being cut off from the internet, as nearly
all North Korean citizens are. When they need technical infor-
mation, the programmers told Pietrosanti, they find it offline.
He’s now contemplating establishing a permanent research
and design center there; €30,000, he figures, would pay for
five or six full-time developers for a year.
Cao de Benós says that other influential people, including
Americans, have visited Pyongyang at his invitation, but they
rarely talk about it. This frustrates him. He wishes they would
scream from the rooftops of the fantastic visits that obliter-
ate their preexisting biases about Asia’s utopia.
A former defense minister from a European nation that
Cao de Benós won’t name recently contacted him to inquire
about a trip, he says. This was an opportunity for promo-
tion, to “break the propaganda that you cannot travel to North
Korea—or, you know, that we will kill you,” he says. “But they
don’t want that, because they know the problem it will cre-
ate.” Cao de Benós gets it. When he built the North Korean
website, he had a good job doing IT. But after word about“I will sacrifice myself in the capitalist jungle and fight my way”^47