TechFlow reported that on December 3, Yonhap News Agency reported that the Cheongju District Court sentenced a 6th-level public official A (in his 40s) of the Cheongju City Government to 5 years in prison. Since January 2017, the official has used student work-study programs and North Korean defector resettlement support programs to embezzle 600 million won (about 427,800 U.S. dollars) of public funds for cryptocurrency and stock investments and to repay personal debts by forging official documents.