Internal Emails Show Sony Struggling to Comprehend North Korea Threat

When in late November of last year, news broke that Sony Pictures Entertainment had been hacked by an obscure group calling themselves the “Guardians of Peace,” the full scale of the attack was all but impossible to comprehend. Entire email archives had been seized, internal files had been stolen, unreleased movies were obtained. Soon, that information would be trickled out to the media in an ostensible effort to suppress the release of The Interview, a Sony film depicting the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. According to U.S. officials, North Korean hackers were behind the attack.

On Thursday, WikiLeaks posted a full, searchable archive of the Sony emails released by the Guardians of Peace. The full archive shows Sony executives grappling during the summer and fall of 2014 with how to address threats by North Korea that they would respond violently if the film were to be released. Through intermediaries, Sony attempted to receive assurances from the U.S. government and North Korea experts about what actions they ought to anticipate from Pyongyang but received little clarity. In a statement, Sony condemned WikiLeaks’ release of the material.

In June of 2014, North Korea began in earnest its campaign against The Interview, calling its release an “act of war.” Such threats led Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton to reach out to Bruce Bennett, a North Korea expert at the Rand Corporation, where Lynton is a member of the board. The Sony emails paint Bennett as Lynton’s main interpreter of North Korea throughout the summer, relying on his advice to understand the possible threat posed by the reclusive country.

“I believe that a story that talks about the removal of the Kim family regime and the creation of a new government by the North Korean people (well, at least the elites) will start some real thinking in South Korea and, I believe, in the North once the DVD leaks into the North (which it almost certainly will),” Bennett wrote to Lynton last June. “The irony is that by making such a big deal of the movie, North Korea will likely cause a significant expansion of the audience that sees it.”

Earlier in June, Bennett watched the film and wrote to Lynton, describing how North Korea might react. “As soon as they do find out about it, they will likely explore Sony’s computer systems to see if Sony is ready to deal with North Korean criticism,” Bennett wrote to Lynton in an analysis that appears unavailable on the WikiLeaks site but an excerpt of which he provided to Foreign Policy.

One day after he received it, Bennett forwarded that analysis to Kazuo Hirai, the CEO of Sony.

But even as Bennett was warning Sony of the threat posed by North Korea, the U.S. government was alternately trying to distance itself from having any involvement on the issue or providing a sanguine analysis of North Korea’s likely behavior.

On behalf of Sony, Bennett reached out to Robert King, the State Department’s special envoy for human rights in North Korea. In another June email, Bennett relayed to Lynton the contents of his discussion with King. “Their office has apparently decided that this is typical North Korean bullying, likely without follow-up, but you never know with North Korea,” Bennett wrote. “Thus, he did not appear worried and clearly wanted to leave any decisions up to Sony.”  

Other State Department officials more forcefully distanced the government from having any involvement. On June 26, an unidentified Sony executive wrote to Nicole Seligman, who is responsible for information security at the company, to describe a conversation with Daniel Russell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. “He [Russell] said that the North Koreans were going to do whatever they were going to do with or without the film, though they may use it as an excuse,” the unidentified executive wrote. “He explained that this was not an area the U.S. government would get involved in. It was our right as a private company to make and distribute the film.”

Asked to comment on communications between the State Department and Sony, a spokesperson said that “the United States respects artists’ and entertainers’ right to produce and distribute content of their choosing,” and that “the U.S. government has no involvement in such decisions.”

It is tempting to read the emails released Thursday as showing that Sony had received warning that North Korea might carry out the spectacular attack that U.S. officials say it was responsible for. Bennett’s analysis, after all, outlined precisely that scenario in an analysis that was presented to Sony’s top executive.

But, as Bennett told FP, North Korea “does a lot of bluster and only occasionally reaches out and does something nasty.”

Michael THURSTON/AFP/Getty Images