In the last couple of months, the tensions between North Korea and the United States have gone from tense to dramatically worse. On August 2017, the United Nations Security Council passed a new resolution that imposed even stricter sanctions on the North Korean government. A very recent article by VOAnews reports that Pyongyang has started its very own Bitcoin mining operation, which peaked back in May 2017. According to the Virginia-based intelligence research firm, Recorded Future, Bitcoin mining could potentially become a major source of income for the North Korean government.
http://bitcoinist.com/north-korea-is-bypassing-international-sanctions-with-bitcoin-mining/
I would be assuming that this is already a confirmed news that Nokor is really into Bitcoin mining inorder to earn some needed revenues so they can buy more materials for their nuclear program and the many military hardware they are developing so they can be the number one country in the world which many others can be fearing.
Now, would this mean another bad image for Bitcoin? Well, the problem is that we can not stop any country or anybody from also doing mining since there is no regulatory body that will determine if one is fit or not to participate in the opportunity.
Nokor regime is a deranged and a rogue one...willing to do anything to advanced their hard-to-fathom causes.