2012 incident when two North Korean nationals working for North Korea’s trade mission in Belarus had been sentenced to eight years for espionage at Yuzhmash. As investigators found, they tried to recruit the staff of Ukrainian enterprises through the Internet. They were interested in secret data related to the equipment of rocket and space hardware, in particular, the fuel systems of flying craft. The spies were detained while they were making photos of theses labeled as confidential.

At that time, as the Yuzhmash chief designer believes, there were no leaks of valuable information.

As for the article in The New York Times, this was someone’s "invention," the Yuzhmash chief designer said.

The New York Times reported on Monday, referring to a new study by Michael Elleman, a missile expert at theInternational Institute for Strategic Studies, that "North Korea’s success in testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears able to reach the United States was made possible by black-market purchases of powerful rocket engines probably from a Ukrainian factory."

"The studies may solve the mystery of how North Korea began succeeding so suddenly after a string of fiery missile failures, some of which may have been caused by American sabotage of its supply chains and cyberattacks on its launches. After those failures, the North changed designs and suppliers in the past two years," the newspaper reported the expert as saying.

According to the newspaper, the most likely supplier of the engines was Yuzhmash in Ukraine’s Dnepr (former Dnepropetrovsk).

Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Alexander Turchinov said on