For that you need intellectuals, and the NK systems killed most of them, and is not tuned to produce new ones. It's very hard to destroy criticism and grow people who can think.
To me 'intellectual' conjures an image of highfalutin college academics - that sort of rigor has not been linked to offensive security, historically. If a rag-tag group like Anon or curious but intelligent teenagers can exploit systems, so can a North Korean cyber-division. If you are suggesting that intelligence has been purged out of the North Korean gene pool, I have a bell-curve to show you.
Do you really think that technical proficiency requires "intellectualism" as it's normally understood? Because I sure don't. How many developers have you known who were extremely fascinated by the narrow details of a technical problem, and utterly uninterested in the wider application and impact of their work? I've worked with more than a few who fit that description.
Intellectual just mean people that use their intellect a lot. It's not limited to debating and philosophy. And mathematician is an intellectual.
And yes, somebody who has the skill to craft a very low level yet highly flexible malware requires skill that goes beyong copy/paste from stackoverflow.
