The Dude and North Korea seem like an unlikely combination.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has found an unlikely ally to help raise cash for his impoverished regime: The Dude, the pot-smoking underachiever played by Jeff Bridges in the movie “The Big Lebowski.”   

Programmers from North Korea’s General Federation of Science and Technology developed a 2007 mobile-phone bowling game based on the 1998 film, as well as “Men in Black: Alien Assault,” according to two executives at Nosotek Joint Venture Company, which markets software from North Korea for foreign clients. Both games were published by a unit of News Corp., the New York-based media company, a spokeswoman for the unit said. 

They represent a growing software industry championed by Kim that is boosting the economy of one of the poorest countries in the world and raising the technological skills of workers. Contracting with North Korean companies is legal under United Nations sanctions unless they are linked to the arms trade.  

 “From the government’s point of view, foreign currency is the main reason to nurture and support these activities,” said Andrei Lankov, an academic specializing in North Korea at Seoul- based Kookmin University. “These activities help to fund the regime, but at the same time they bring knowledge of the outside world to people who could effect change.” 

The technological education of graduates from North Korean universities has “become significantly better,” Volker Eloesser, a founder of Pyongyang-based Nosotek, said in an e- mail. Companies with “hundreds or even thousands of staff each” operate in North Korea, he said. [Bloomberg] 

Maybe the U.S. can send Jeff Bridges in full “Dude” character the next time we need to rescue someone who crosses the border into North Korea.