A phone smuggled out of North Korea in 2024 by news organisation Daily NK reveals many shocking details of the Kim Jong-un’s controlling regime. Despite appearing like a regular, unassuming phone, the device harbours some sinister features implemented in order for the government to maintain maximum control over its people.
Censorship and surveillance are two of the main features within the device, including a screenshot feature which monitors its users’ every move, a BBC investigation has revealed. The privacy of those using this phone is compromised massively, as software automatically takes a screenshot every five minutes, storing them in a folder that can only be accessed by officials. When it comes to typing text messages, even the most basic words are censored or replaced with others more suitable to the regime’s propaganda, such as the South Korean word ‘poppa’, which means ‘big brother’ but is used as a slang term in dramas for ‘boyfriend’. Those daring to type out the word will find it being automatically replaced with ‘comrade’ and be warned that “this word can only be used to describe your siblings”.
The word ‘Nampan’, meaning South Korea itself, is replaced automatically with ‘puppet state’, in a bid to remind the phone’s users that Seoul is North Koreans’ enemy.
The smuggled phone provides an insight into how controlling the Kim regime has become and how easier it’s now for Pyongyang to control its citizens.
Despite the huge control and scrutiny exercised over North Koreans, the regime’s borders aren’t entirely sealed, with small broadcasters and non-profits transmitting information over the border.
Thousands of USB sticks and micro-SD cards are also smuggled from South to North each month, containing South Korean media and also information about democracy and other educational items, in a bid to give locals a glimpse of life beyond the regime.
Sokeel Park, whose organisation Liberty in North Korea works to distribute the 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.”
Kim Jong-un‘s regime hasn’t stood idle at these attempts, and has tried to crack down by installing electric fences on the border with China, making it difficult to smuggle goods into the country. Punishments for being caught doing such activities were also made harsher.
In an extreme move, the dictator also reportedly made it a crime for people to use a South Korean accent or phrases. This led to the implementation of the oppressive technology found in the smartphone, aiming to spread distrust for outside forces such as South Korea.
Martyn Williams, a senior fellow at the Washington, DC-based Stimson Center and an expert in North Korean technology and information, said: “Smartphones are now part and parcel of the way North Korea tries to indoctrinate people.”