Park Ji-won is a writer for The Korea Times who has been covering a wide range of topics from Korea’s culture to its politics. An avid journalism enthusiast to the core, Ji-won brings a thoughtful and unique perspective to every topic she covers. On weekends, you'll often find her contemplating life’s purpose on a yoga mat — with a cup of quality tea in hand. A native Korean speaker by birth and fluent in English through her work, she went to college in Japan and is learning Chinese and French — hoping to add Polish, Russian and Thai to the mix.
North Korea seeking outside information ban via smartphone
A North Korean woman holds her smartphone in Pyongyang. Korea Times file photo
By Park Ji-won
By Park Ji-won
North Korea is trying to find more ways to control access to outside information as the number of its citizens with smartphones increases, according to a recent report.
In the report released by the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) on Dec. 18, journalist Martyn Williams wrote that the ways of shutting down overseas information in smartphones have been diversified over the last decade in an apparent move to control its people's freedom.
“Over the last decade, the regime has gotten increasingly sophisticated at clamping down on PCs and smartphones,” Williams wrote in the report titled "Digital Trenches: North Korea's Information Counter-Offensive."
“It has proven adept at reacting to the potential freedoms such digital devices can bring and subverted open-source software to prevent citizens from exploiting those freedoms.
“As cellular subscriptions rose, which is considered some 5 million, more and more citizens use their phones to watch foreign media and, not only shutting down the cellular network, the country started to come up with various ways to control information by modifying the devices” he wrote.
He said Pyongyang was trying to adjust its strategies in three pillars to limit access to foreign media; punishment of users, surveillance of digital device use and propaganda.
He added, for example, the authorities worked to modify the Android operating system used on phones to lock down devices and make them much less useful for illicit media consumption.
Even though consuming foreign media had been considered a serious crime in the North, he said, “The mass of foreign content that has entered the country from the mid-2000s onwards has led to a curtailing of hard sentences for all but the most serious crimes.”
Some experts say the North's regime will keep controlling information through its state-operated media network.
“The characteristic of the North Korean regime is that the country continues to control (outside information) and not allow its citizens to consume (content from overseas, being that is illegal in North Korea)," said Chung Eun-chan of the Institute of Unification Education.
She added that there were three major mobile carriers in North Korea ― Kangsong Network Carrier, Koryo Link and Byol ― and the North was likely tapping into citizens' phones through an embedded system in the Kangsong network.
“The country embedded a tapping system in the Kangsong Network and now forces people to join this network and avoid Koryo Link, which has a wiretap-proof security system.”