By Sunny Lee
Korea Times Correspondent
BEIJING ― A Chinese daily refuted Wednesday South Korean news reports stating that North Korea was operating a cyber terror base in China that was likely behind the recent massive cyber attacks in the U.S. and South Korea.
The Global Times, published under the official People's Daily, reported that the news was unfounded.
Citing a document from Seoul's top spy agency, the JoongAng Ilbo said Sunday that Pyongyang has been running a cyber attack base since 2004 in a hotel in Dandong, a city in Liaoning Province that borders North Korea.
The news piqued the interest of Sun Ke, a reporter with the Global Times, who grew up in the city and wondered whether the hotel mentioned was the same one he knew.
From Google Map, he discovered that there was a hotel by the name Xinghai ― the only one ― in that area. He then called the local telephone service company and double-checked it.
The JoongAng reported that the hotel was a four-story building and there were about 10 North Korean workers working in a fourth floor "safe house" where they conducted cyber activities around-the-clock.
However, upon arriving at the hotel Sun found that there were actually six floors in the building, not four. In fact, the original article had carried a picture of the hotel, showing six floors.
The report also detailed that in the rooms were 10 Samsung desktop computers, a Samsung CRT monitor and an LCD monitor ― as if someone had actually visited the place and counted them.
It turned out the entire hotel has only two old computers.
With the help of a hotel employee, the Chinese reporter was able to check the rooms. All the rooms he saw on the fourth floor were about 10m2, but nowhere was there a big "115m2 safe house."
The JoongAng article also said the hotel was run by a North Korean, and later owned by a Chinese person. It turned out that the hotel is actually a state-run business, specifically owned by the Customs Office and the ownership has never changed hands.
While mentioning the possibility that the North used the Xinghai Hotel for the recent cyber attacks, the article noted there were still "frequent comings and goings of North Koreans to and from the hotel." The Global Times discounted this as well, saying the hotel mainly serves Chinese guests, and its restaurant "doesn't even serve kimchi."
"The hotel is certainly not the place that attacked South Korean Web sites 95,000 times and virtually paralyzed the country's Internet services for three days in a row," the Global Times said.
"This is simply a defamation of the hotel," the incensed manager was quoted as saying, after being briefed about the report.
Before exiting the hotel, the Chinese reporter once again confirmed with hotel workers at reception desk that there was only one Xinghai Hotel in the area.
A military security analyst, Dai Xu, told the Global Times that the JoongAng report "intentionally" exaggerated one possible scenario for the cyber attacks in order to stir up public opinion in South Korea so that it would be easier to lobby for establishing a cyber warfare unit.
On Monday, citing unnamed intelligence sources, South Korean broadcaster YTN reported from Beijing that Kim Jong-il has pancreatic cancer.
That news gathered intense international attention because of concerns about the famine-stricken country's instability and a possible power struggle.
However, some critics afterwards pointed out that one major symptom of pancreatic cancer is obesity. The recent pictures of Kim showed him looking thinner and wearier.
Observers say fierce competition among media outlets for news about the reclusive and elusive North Korea is making some report speculation rather than facts.
The Global Times article is spreading quickly in China through major portals such as Baidu, Sina, and Sohu. A Chinese Google key word search for the combination of "Dandong, Xinghai, hackers" on Wednesday yielded 8,350 results.