It sounds to me like the US released a report about NK espionage operations, and then people "thought" (as the article phrases it) that NK operatives were everywhere, and now we have this article that just seems to tie the most obnoxious freelancer behavior to NK espionage, without any actual evidence.
We're just repeating an old page from an old playbook.
> Back in 1937 Comrade Stalin pointed out that as long as the Soviet Union existed amid capitalist encirclement we would have wreckers, spies, saboteurs and murderers sent to our home front by foreign states. [1]
Just change the names and the years and the professions around, and we'll be good to go. The actual existence, non-existence, or prevalence of spies, saboteurs and wreckers is second fiddle to the perception thereof. :)
I find the best part about reading McCarthyism history is that THERE ARE communist traitors in USA, sometimes in very high places https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White#Venona_pr... . I guess if your spy network is sophisticated enough to make your enemy have to blunder either for false negative (your spy doesn't get caught) or false positive (your enemy self sabotage, killing their own kins), you win.