 But this latest scheme is designed to get North Korean IT workers legitimate remote jobs that pay legitimate U.S. dollars. They've made a lot of money. We think that these IT workers can generate at least $300 million per year. Pak and her colleagues across the U.S. government and law enforcement and intelligence say that money is going directly to North Korea's nuclear weapons program, one of the major reasons the hermit kingdom is so heavily sanctioned in the first place.