South Korea's spy agency said a North Korean IT group operating overseas produced thousands of illegal gambling sites and sold them to South Korean crime organizations.

The National Intelligence Service(NIS) said on Wednesday that the group is Kyonghung Information Technology Exchange Company based in Dandong, China, under Office 39 of the North's ruling Workers' Party. Office 39 is known to manage secret funds of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his family.

The NIS said 15 members of the organization have produced gambling websites using a systematic division of labor, receiving five-thousand U.S. dollars for each site and three-thousand dollars a month for maintenance and repair works. Each person sent 500 dollars from the profits each month to Pyongyang.
 
The NIS said crime organizations in the South have continued business with the North Koreans because of low associated costs.

The spy agency said the North Korean IT workers, who stole a total of around one-thousand-100 personal data points from users acquired when maintaining the gambling sites, had also attempted to sell them.