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Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
A smuggled North Korean smartphone reveals how the regime censors information, including screenshotting users activities every five minutes
A smartphone smuggled out of North Korea sheds light on how the regime tightly censors content. Measures include automatically replacing popular South Korean words with regime-approved terms and recording screenshots of user activity for officials to review. A smartphone smuggled out of North Korea has given a glimpse into how Kim Jong Un's regime censors information in the isolated and secretive country. The phone, which was smuggled out of the country late last year by a Seoul-based media organization, Daily NK, and later obtained by the BBC, was programmed to censor certain language and record screenshots of the user's activity. The smartphone does not have access to the internet as North Korea blocks information from outside the country. According to a BBC report, the smartphone takes screenshots of the user's actions every five minutes and saves them in a file the user can see but not open. Only the North Korean authorities can open the files, allowing them to review what users are looking at. Popular South Korean words like 'oppa,' which literally translates to big brother but has become South Korean slang for a boyfriend, are automatically replaced with the word 'comrade.' Users also receive a warning; in this example, it said: 'This word can only be used to describe your siblings.' The Korean word for 'South Korea' is also replaced with 'puppet state.' This reflects a broader effort by the regime to eliminate South Korean cultural influence and control citizens, even down to how people speak. North Korea is one of the most isolated and authoritarian countries in the world and has been ruled by the Kim dynasty since its founding in 1948. The regime maintains strict control over its population through surveillance, propaganda, and an extensive network of informants. Citizens are cut off from the global internet, and even minor infractions, such as watching foreign media, can result in severe punishment. Recently, South Korea has been smuggling more foreign content into the neighboring state as part of a covert 'information war.' The aim is to expose North Koreans to the outside world, especially what life is like for people in South Korea, who experience more freedom and wealth. South Korea and various NGOs employ multiple tactics to do this, including blaring loudspeakers at the border and secretly distributing USB sticks and SD cards filled with K-dramas, pop songs, and pro-democracy material into North Korea. The underground effort is run by NGOs like Unification Media Group (UMG). North Korea has intensified its crackdowns in response, enforcing stricter laws, surveillance, executions, and 'youth crackdown squads' that police citizens' behavior and language. Efforts to smuggle the restricted information into North Korea have also been impacted by President Trump's cuts to foreign aid projects. The administration has reduced funding for key media projects that are working on getting information into the country, like Radio Free Asia and Voice of America. This story was originally featured on
Time of India
a day ago
- Business
- Time of India
How North Korea is using smartphones to win 'war' against South Korea, and winning it
A smartphone smuggled out of has exposed the regime's sophisticated digital control system that automatically censors South Korean words, takes secret screenshots every five minutes, and warns users against forbidden language, revealing how is gaining ground in an information war against the South. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The device, obtained by the BBC through Seoul-based Daily NK, appears identical to standard smartphones but operates as a surveillance tool disguised as consumer technology. When users type " oppa ,"a South Korean slang term for boyfriend, the phone auto-corrects it to "comrade" and displays a warning that the word should only refer to siblings. Similarly, " South Korea " automatically changes to "puppet state," reflecting North Korean propaganda. The smuggled North Korean smartphone (Source: BBC) Most disturbing is the phone's covert surveillance feature: it captures screenshots every five minutes and stores them in a secret folder accessible only to authorities, not users. This creates a comprehensive digital record of every user activity for government monitoring. "Smartphones are now part and parcel of the way North Korea tries to indoctrinate people," Martyn Williams, a North Korean technology expert at the Stimson Center, told the BBC. He warned that North Korea is "starting to gain the upper hand" in the information war. Digital underground fights back in information war While Kim Jong Un's smartphone surveillance system demonstrates the regime's growing technological sophistication, a small but determined community of North Korean hackers is mounting resistance by jailbreaking government-approved phones. According to a 2022 report by human rights organization Lumen and the Stimson Center, these digital rebels, often educated at elite universities like Kim Il Sung University, use USB connections and Windows PCs to install unauthorized software that bypasses censorship controls. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The jailbreakers primarily seek access to forbidden South Korean dramas, K-pop music, and unapproved apps, the very content Kim's smartphone restrictions are designed to block. Some operate commercial services, helping others remove restrictions from their devices. Their activities have prompted new laws specifically targeting "phone manipulation programs," indicating that despite the regime's apparent upper hand in the information war, authorities remain concerned about this underground resistance. Regime profits from illegal smartphone trade North Korea's smartphone industry itself violates international sanctions, generating significant revenue for the regime. An estimated six million North Koreans, a quarter of the population, now own mobile phones, with basic devices costing $100-$400 despite average monthly earnings of just $100. Analysis of North Korean phones by Reuters reveals they contain Taiwanese semiconductors, Chinese batteries, and modified Android operating systems, all imported despite 2017 UN sanctions prohibiting mobile hardware imports. The phones are manufactured by Chinese companies like Gionee using components from MediaTek and Toshiba, though these companies deny direct business with North Korea. This digital infrastructure supports North Korea's informal market economy while providing the regime with unprecedented surveillance capabilities and sanctions-busting revenue streams, demonstrating how authoritarian governments can weaponize consumer technology for social control. As Williams warned, North Korea is "starting to gain the upper hand" in the information war.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Phone smuggled out of North Korea reveals shocking details of Kim Jong-un's regime including 'scary' screenshot feature
A phone secretly smuggled out of North Korea has revealed the shocking details of Kim Jong-Un 's oppressive regime. Although it appears like a standard phone from the outside, the North Korean handset is part of the dictatorship's efforts to keep its citizens in the dark. The device includes a 'scary' screenshot feature which monitors users' every move, a BBC investigation revealed. Software automatically takes a screenshot every five minutes and locks the snips in a folder that users themselves can't access and can only be seen by the authorities. This allows North Korea's 'youth crackdown squads' to ensure citizens haven't been searching for illegal information or sharing anything critical of the government. In another Orwellian feature, the phone even prevents the user from typing certain popular South Korean terms. For example, the South Korean word 'oppa', which literally means 'big brother' but is used as a slang term for 'boyfriend', is automatically replaced by the word for 'comrade'. After replacing the word, the phone issues a chilling warning to the user saying: 'This word can only be used to describe your siblings'. Similarly, the BBC found that even the word for South Korea, 'Nampan', was automatically edited to say 'puppet state' - the government's term for South Korea. The phone, which was smuggled out of the country in 2024 by the news organisation Daily NK, shows just how much control Kim Jong Un has over his citizens' access to information. North Korea has extremely limited access to the global internet and all media including newspapers, radio, and television stations are owned and controlled by the state. However, some South Korean organisations are currently locked in a secretive information war with the oppressive regime. Each night, small broadcasters and non-profits transmit information over the border on short and medium-wave radio frequencies. Additionally, thousands of USB sticks and micro-SD cards are smuggled into North Korea each month. These contain South Korean music, television shows and movies alongside more dangerous information such as educational materials about democracy. The goal is to undermine the government's narrative about the outside world by showing how wealthy, happy, and free people are in South Korea. Things banned in North Korea Owning or distributing South Korean films and television shows. Using South Korean words or speaking with a South Korean accent. Wearing a white wedding dress. Having a South Korean haircut. Wearing 'un-revolutionary' clothing such as sunglasses or jeans. Making international calls. Accessing foreign media and news. Possessing a shortwave radio. Criticising the government or making jokes about Kim Jong Un. Those risking their lives to get this information into the country say that it has a real impact on the North Koreans who get a glimpse of the outside world. Sokeel Park, whose organisation Liberty in North Korea works to distribute this content, told the BBC: 'Most recent North Korean defectors and refugees say it was foreign content that motivated them to risk their lives to escape.' In response, Kim Jong Un has stepped up his crackdown on culture with a particular focus on South Korean influences. Starting in the pandemic he ordered the installation of electric fences on the border with China, which makes it harder to smuggle goods into the country. In 2020, the punishments for those caught consuming or distributing foreign information were increased. One law stated that anyone found distributing foreign media could be imprisoned or even executed. Then, in 2023, Kim Jong Un made it a crime for people to use South Korean phrases or speak in a South Korean accent. These restrictions were swiftly implemented into the software of devices produced in the country, such as the smuggled smartphone, to prevent anyone from using popular South Korean terms. Martyn Williams, a senior fellow at the Washington, DC-based Stimson Center and an expert in North Korean technology and information, says: 'Smartphones are now part and parcel of the way North Korea tries to indoctrinate people.' Following these recent crackdowns, Mr Williams warns that North Korea is 'starting to gain the upper hand' in the information war. Kang Gyuri, 24, who escaped from North Korea in late 2023 told the BBC that so-called 'youth crackdown squads' patrol the streets to monitor young people's behaviour. These squads would confiscate her phone and check her messages to see if she had been using any South Korean terms. Ms Kang also says she was aware of young people who had been executed for being found with South Korean content on their devices. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN NORTH KOREA AND SOUTH KOREA In June 1950 fighting broke out between the communist North and capitalist South, sparking a brutal war that killed between two and four million people. Beijing backed Pyongyang in the three-year conflict, while Washington threw its support behind the South -- alliances that have largely endured. The Koreas have been locked in a dangerous dance ever since that conflict ended in 1953 with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty, leaving them technically at war. Pyongyang has tested the fragile ceasefire with numerous attacks. The secretive nation sent a team of 31 commandos to Seoul in a botched attempt to assassinate then-President Park Chung-Hee in 1968. All but two were killed. In the 'axe murder incident' of 1976, North Korean soldiers attacked a work party trying to chop down a tree inside the Demilitarized Zone, leaving two US army officers dead. Pyongyang launched perhaps its most audacious assassination attempt in Myanmar in 1983, when a bomb exploded in a Yangon mausoleum during a visit by South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan. He survived but 21 people, including some government ministers, were killed. In 1987 a bomb on a Korean Air flight exploded over the Andaman Sea, killing all 115 people on board. Seoul accused Pyongyang, which denied involvement. The North's founding leader Kim Il-Sung died in 1994, but under his son Kim Jong-Il it continued to prod its southern neighbor. In 1996 a North Korean submarine on a spying mission ran aground off the eastern South Korean port of Gangneung, sparking 45-day manhunt that ended with 24 crew members and infiltrators killed. A clash between South Korean and North Korean naval ships in 1999 left some 50 of the North's soldiers dead. In March 2010 Seoul accused Pyongyang of torpedoing one of its corvette warships, killing 46 sailors. Pyongyang denied the charge. November that year saw North Korea launch its first attack on a civilian-populated area since the war, firing 170 artillery shells at Yeonpyeong. Four people were killed, including two civilians. North Korea has steadfastly pursued its banned nuclear and ballistic missile programs since its first successful test of an atomic bomb in 2006, as it looks to build a rocket capable of delivering a warhead to the US mainland. Its progress has accelerated under leader Kim Jong-Un, culminating in its sixth and biggest nuclear test in September 2017. Kim has since declared the country a nuclear power. Despite the caustic effect of clashes and the battery of conventional weapons that the North has amassed at the border to threaten Seoul, the two nations have held talks in the past. Then North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il held two historic summits with counterparts from the South in 2000 and 2007, which eased tensions between the neighbors. Lower-level talks since then have been much hyped but failed to produce significant results.
Daily Mirror
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
Inside Kim Jong-Un's North Korea as smuggled smartphone reveals new scary rule
South Korean slang words are banned in North Korea - and the smartphone even takes an undetected screenshot every five minutes, with the images presumably seen by the Communist government A contraband smartphone from North Korea has laid bare the chilling tactics employed by supreme leader Kim Jong Un to maintain his iron-clad grip over citizens. The seemingly innocuous handset is engineered to suppress any hints of South Korean vernacular and even stealthily snaps a screenshot every five minutes. These covert captures are then stashed away in an inscrutable folder, thought to be monitored by the ruling Communist party. An attempt to input the term "oppa" - a word that nominally means "older brother" in Korean but has gained romantic connotations in modern South Korea - results in an automatic rewrite to "comrade." The user is promptly reprimanded with a pop-up alerting them that "oppa" is strictly for referring to elder siblings. Moreover, typing "South Korea" triggers a shocking autocorrect to "puppet state". The device was sneakily transported out of the Hermit Kingdom by Daily NK, a Seoul-based news outlet, last year and unearthed during a BBC probe, reports the Daily Star. North Korean technology and information specialist Martyn Williams imparted to the UK broadcaster that smartphones have become a crucial tool in Pyongyang's propaganda arsenal. "Smartphones are now part and parcel of the way North Korea tries to indoctrinate people," he revealed. This Stimson Center senior fellow residing in Washington, DC, also cautioned that the cloistered nation is increasingly gaining the upper hand in its informational stranglehold #. Just this year, Kim elevated the stakes by criminalising the usage of South Korean slang or accents as tantamount to high treason. 'Youth crackdown squads' are reportedly patrolling the streets to monitor young North Koreans. Dissident Kang Gyuri, 24, recounted her experiences of being abruptly stopped and scolded for emulating South Korean fashion and hair. Fortunately, she managed to flee the oppressive regime by boat in 2023 and now resides in South Korea. Speaking to the BBC, Kang revealed that the regime's agents would seize her phone to search for any forbidden South Korean terms in her messages. North Korea outlaws all foreign culture, including television, newspapers, and music. Consequently, reports suggest that thousands of USB drives and micro-SD cards packed with South Korean dramas and K-pop tunes are smuggled across the border monthly, concealed within fruit boxes. Kang expressed that it was her eventual discovery of life outside North Korea which spurred her decision to defect. She said: "I felt so suffocated, and I suddenly had an urge to leave. "I used to think it was normal that the state restricted us so much. I thought other countries lived with this control. But then I realised it was only in North Korea."
Sky News AU
3 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News AU
Screenshot every five minutes: Smartphone smuggled out of North Korea shows the insane things Kim Jong Un does to control his ‘suffocated' people
A smartphone smuggled out of North Korea has revealed the astonishing levels of control the secretive dictatorship is exercising over its people. The phone, which from the outside appears no different from a normal device, issued warnings about using South Korean slang words to users, and auto-corrected 'South Korea' to read 'puppet state,' an investigation from the BBC found. It would also covertly take a screenshot every five minutes, storing the images in a secret folder which the user couldn't access, but which presumably were accessible to North Korean authorities. When the user tried to type in the word 'oppa,' which means older brother in Korean, but has come to be used to refer to a boyfriend in South Korean slang, the phone would auto-correct the word to the more communist-friendly alternative, 'comrade.' A warning would then flash up, warning the phone's user that the term 'oppa' could only be used for older siblings, the BBC investigation found. The bizarre Orwellian practices with a 21st-century twist were revealed after Daily NK, a Seoul-based media organization, secretly smuggled the North Korean cell phone out of the country late last year. It is only the latest example of a draconian clampdown on modern technology by Kim Jong Un's authoritarian regime, revealing that the dictatorship may be winning the battle of the tech world. '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. North Korea is now 'starting to gain the upper hand' in the information war, he warned. In other signs of a hardening of the rules, using South Korean phrases or speaking in a South Korean accent were officially made a state crime by Kim in 2023. Members of 'youth crackdown squads' are seen patrolling the streets, monitoring the behavior of young North Koreans. North Korean dissident, Kang Gyuri, 24, told the BBC she would be stopped and reprimanded for styling her hair and dressing like a South Korean. She escaped the hermit regime by boat in 2023 and now lives in South Korea. Kang said goon squads would also confiscate her phone and read her text messages to check for any forbidden South Korean terms. This tougher approach from Kim's regime is in response to the efforts of the South Korean government to spread subversive messages north of the border and open the eyes of the North Korean people to how drastically different life is in the South. While all outside newspapers and TV channels are banned in the North, a small number of broadcasters have been able to secretly transmit information into the country late at night via short and medium radio waves. Thousands of USB sticks and micro-SD cards containing South Korean dramas and K-pop songs are also smuggled over the border every month, often hidden inside boxes of fruit. Much of this work is funded by the US government, with some warning that recent aid cuts by President Trump could risk giving Kim the upper hand. 'The reason for this control is that so much of the mythology around the Kim family is made up. A lot of what they tell people is lies,' Martyn Williams said. For dissidents such as Kang, her first exposure to the outside world was via some of these illicit radio broadcasts and K-dramas, which led to her desperation to get out of the communist dystopia. 'I felt so suffocated, and I suddenly had an urge to leave,' she said. 'I used to think it was normal that the state restricted us so much. I thought other countries lived with this control. But then I realized it was only in North Korea,' she said. Originally published as Screenshot every five minutes: Smartphone smuggled out of North Korea shows the insane things Kim Jong Un does to control his 'suffocated' people
