Terrifying North Korean phone that makes sure its owners stay in line by censoring their texts as they type
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A phone secretly smuggled out of North Korea has revealed the shocking lengths Kim Jong-Un's oppressive regime goes to keep their subjects in line.
Although it looks like a standard mobile, the North Korean handset is part of the dictatorship's efforts to censor information sharing and keep citizens in the dark about the world outside the hermit state.
The modified devices include a 'scary' screenshot feature which monitors users' every move, a BBC investigation has 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 hardline 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 big brother-style warning to the user saying: 'This word can only be used to describe your siblings'.
Using the device, 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, is the latest example of how much control Kim Jong Un exercises over his citizens.
Failure to display sufficient reverence for the country's leadership is considered a grave offence, punishable by fines, imprisonment, or even execution.
North Korean authorities have repeatedly cracked down on users of Chinese-made mobile phones, with hundreds of people arrested in 2021, according to news website Daily NK.
Those arrested were reportedly sent to prison camps, where they were subjected to torture methods including being hung from the ceiling, given electric shocks and sexual assaults.
In 2021, a South Korean human rights organisation documented 23 public executions in the rogue state and featured testimony from North Korean defectors who were forced to watch executions alongside the family members of the condemned.
One witness told the the Seoul-based Transitional Justice Working Group, the organisation behind the report, that the executions were used as a warning from the state, with students and workers being ordered to watch.
'Even when there was fluid leaking from the condemned person's brain,' they told researchers, 'people were made to stand in line and look at the executed person in the face as a warning message.'
Seven executions were punishments for watching or distributing South Korean media, such as K-pop, according to the report.
North Korea strictly limits 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.
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.
Source: AFP
