Smartphones in North Korea Spy on Citizens

Gulf Insider

2 days ago

The BBC has reported on smartphones smuggled out of North Korea that are setup to spy on citizens and prevent them from using language that is not authorised by the Communist state.
Instead of simply not allowing North Korean people to have such devices, the regime there has decided to manufacture and distribute phones as a tool for further controlling the population amid fears that freedom, in the form of South Korean culture, is encroaching.
The BBC reporter demonstrates how the phone edits words and phrases that are are not acceptable to the North Korean government, and replaces them with language they have sanctioned.
NEW: The BBC has obtained a phone that was smuggled out of North Korea that edits words North Koreans aren't supposed to use.Wild.North Korea has now adopted smartphones to indoctrinate its citizens.If a user tries typing a blocked word, the phone will edit it to a word… pic.twitter.com/InvnIBZPsf — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 31, 2025
In one example, the reporter types in a South Korean slang word for 'boyfriend' and the phone changes it to 'comrade.'
A second example shows the reporter typing in 'South Korea' and the phone automatically changing it to 'Puppet State.'
The phone also covertly takes a screenshot every five minutes, stores the images in a secret folder which the user cannot access, but North Korean authorities can scour through should they wish to do so.
The report also notes that the North Korean Communists have deployed 'youth crackdown squads' to patrol the streets listening out for people using South Korean slang or styles of language.
Wild stuff.
'Smartphones are now part and parcel of the way North Korea tries to indoctrinate people,' Martyn Williams, a senior fellow at the Washington DC-based Stimson Center, and an expert in North Korean technology and information, told the BBC.
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