Given that Sony Pictures is incorporated in the United States and that the US has had severe trade sanctions targeting North Korea since circa 1950, I’m going to hazard a “no”.
Yes. The Rasong Special Economic Zone has companies from Russia, China and Mongolia investing in it. South Korea’s Hyundai has a division developing tourism and a factory in the North. Also, French broadcaster TF1 has had animation work done in North Korea; Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang was based on his experiences managing one such project in, well, Pyongyang.
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Absolutely, as @heckblazer says above. The reason I ask about Sony is that quite a lot of animation is done in Pyongyang for foreign clients. Would be an interesting angle to expore.
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There is more than one way to skin a cat.
For instance, US sports shoes were made in North Korean factories in the 80s. This was during the days when such shoes were made in South Korean factories located in South Korea (before they went offshore to Indonesia and then China - and now Vietnam). When a SK factory had a big order that couldn’t be fulfilled, they would sometimes outsource it to NK factories. (Source: Conversation in Chinese sports shoe factory with ex-military South Korean and 30 year veteran of running shoe factories in Asia in the early 2000s.)
In the mid-2000s I met a Brit in Beijing who ran a small company assisting foreign firms doing business in NK (and by “foreign firms” I mean some very large companies). Many of his clients were US companies.
Several rather large US studios who outsource animation work to SK have had their work outsourced in turn to NK.
Severe trade sanctions are not so severe if you know the right people.
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You have to admire how clumsy that paragraph was translated. It really ramps up the batshit crazy factor when you stuff a bunch of awkward turns of phrases into their mouths. That could just as easily have been translated as “One of the biggest movie studios in the United States, Sony Pictures, was attacked by hackers, causing loses possibly as high as hundreds of millions of dollars. This was possibly in retaliation for the upcoming film ‘The Interview’, which was baselessly critical of our leader.”
But of course it sounds way better when you translate it into words that no one ever uses in English, as if the Korean language counterparts were just as obscure and insane.
Not saying I support the DPRK in any way, but this kind of sloppy translation is a cheap and often used propaganda move.
Fucking Comcast
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Maybe a private US operation, but if the US Government got involved you’d know it by the smoking holes in the ground. I doubt President Obama would waste time and resources on a DDOS.
If the US govt was involved, there would be an additional bombing of Pakistan coupled with land invasion of Bahrain.
With Seoul trembling that the Americans would stumble over the right map and look just a little wrong at it.
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Don’t ask for facts, just be outraged.
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True enough, except that the English translation comes directly from North Korea’s press agency. Presumably they have entirely capable foreign language translators in their service, and they made all of the weird word and phrasing choices.
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You’re making my (exaggerated for affect) point for me!
Depends on what you mean by “doing business”. I’m pretty confident in asserting that Sony Pictures has not shot any productions in North Korea or engaged in direct investment there or made any business agreements with the DPRK government. A partner’s sub-contractor might outsource work there, but that’s technically not Sony 
Oh, thank you. I forgot I am on The Internet. 
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Maybe it saves time to use cliches–inventive word choice needs to be approved by a few bureaucrats, some of whom lack fluency in the target language.
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