Number of security researchers isn't a function of population size it is a function of population size * fraction with propensity to show requisite skill * fraction who go to work in the profession.
Shockingly adding millions of more starving people who have never seen a computer doesn't get you many more cybersecurity specialists.
It's also one of nine nuclear powers and one of ten to have developed space launch capability. It also scores near the top of the international math olympiad regularly. What makes you certain North Korea hasn't similarly invested in developing security researchers?
Apples net income is bigger than their GDP and most of their people as impoverished, malnourished and poorly educated.
The upper caste from which all their "talent" is drawn is a small fraction of its total population mostly composed of the descendants of the lower class peasants and workers who supported the rise of the current regime. They supported not an establishment of such a system but rather an inversion of the prior order. It's an impoverished field from which little of value grows. To be clear there is nothing inferior about North Koreans by nature it is that the regime wastes the value that it does get.
Einsteins are in theory as apt to be born from the less privileged classes but there is only a 50 50 chance of getting enough food to be healthy let alone a chance at intellectual development.
They just need to send a couple dozen of their brightest talent. You know their engineers & scientists train in Russia and China, right? Which from my last recollection, invests heavily in offensive cyber warfare.
By your same logic, they would not have any Olympic competitors, let alone medalists.
You get a bright talented individual by offering 1000 ample nutrition and educational opportunities historically with computer tech you give people the opportunity to learn and play with it from an early age.
Most nations educate millions to 10s of millions in order to get their doctors, scientists, software developers, leaders. Someone who educates merely thousands of the kids of new rich kids selected primarily from the ranks of the lowest echelons of society a century OK is poorly positioned to be the best in any field.
https://globalnews.ca/news/5029484/north-korea-malnutrition-...
Number of security researchers isn't a function of population size it is a function of population size * fraction with propensity to show requisite skill * fraction who go to work in the profession.
Shockingly adding millions of more starving people who have never seen a computer doesn't get you many more cybersecurity specialists.