Jun Ji-hye, a reporter at the finance desk of The Korea Times, focuses primarily on economic policy and government agencies, mainly covering the Ministry of Finance and Economy, the Ministry of Budget and Planning, the National Tax Service and the Korea Customs Service. She previously covered financial authorities, including the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service, and earlier worked on the political, city and business desks, reporting on a wide range of issues.
NK Internet down for second day
By Jun Ji-hye
Internet access in North Korea was disabled for a second consecutive day early Wednesday amid growing speculation that a cyber war has started between Washington and Pyongyang.
The second day without Internet access came after the repressive state restored services on Tuesday morning following an outage that lasted almost 10 hours.
Internet performance analyst Dyn Research, the company that identified that Pyongyang’s Internet was down, wrote on Twitter that it was disabled again at 0:41 a.m. Wednesday.
The repeated shutdown of the North’s system followed U.S. President Barack Obama’s vow to hold Pyongyang proportionally responsible for hacking Sony Pictures and forcing it to cancel the screening of “The Interview.” The satirical movie is about a CIA plot for a TV show host and his producer to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Following the second blackout, the website of the North’s main propaganda organ, Uriminzokkiri, and other well-known propaganda websites, including Ryugyong and Ryomyong, remained inaccessible for an hour.
The cause of the outage is still unknown, while speculation abounds that Washington may be responsible.
The U.S. Department of State has neither confirmed nor denied its role.
“As the President said, we are considering a range of options in response,” deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told a press briefing.
“We aren’t going to discuss publicly operational details about the possible response options … except to say that as we implement our responses, some will be seen, some may not be seen.
“So I can’t confirm those reports, but in general, that’s what the President has spoken about.”
Meanwhile, Sony Pictures announced a limited Christmas Day release for the comedy. CEO Michael Lynton said Seth Rogen’s North Korea farce “will be in a number of theaters” beginning Thursday. He said Sony was also continuing its efforts to release the film on more platforms and in more theaters.
“We have never given up on releasing ‘The Interview,’” Lynton said in a statement on Tuesday.
“While we hope this is only the first step of the film’s release, we are proud to make it available to the public and to have stood up to those who attempted to suppress free speech.”
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