U.S. based Fox News says North Korea has fostered more than 30-thousand specialists for cyber attacks.

The report said North Korean defectors said on Tuesday that the electronic warfare specialists have become the elite core of the North’s military.

Defectors added that the regime now selects the brightest students from the nation’s universities and funnels them into special “secret” schools that concentrate on hacking and developing cyber warfare programs targeted at South Korea.

Fox also noted that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told his military several years ago “that modern war is electronic warfare and victory or defeat in a modern war depends on how to carry out electronic warfare.”

The report said estimates from Washington and Seoul show that the North’s electronic warfare abilities rival those of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.