North Koreans use knowledge gained in China to defy smartphone censorship, report finds

Smartphones have proliferated in North Korea, but very few people are allowed to access the global internet because of apps and other controls that monitor use

US-based non-profit organisation Lumen found much of the knowledge needed to circumvent government controls came from North Koreans sent to China for work

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A man uses a smartphone in Pyongyang. A few tech-savvy North Koreans have managed to circumvent tight government controls on smartphone use. Photo: AP

Published: 3:54pm, 28 Apr 2022

Despite North Korea intensifying efforts to stop citizens from seeing information coming from outside the country, a few tech savvy individuals are managing to circumvent tight government controls on smartphones, a US-based group said in a report.

“The scale of the hacking still appears to be minor, but recent changes to North Korean law indicate national authorities view it as a serious problem,” Lumen, a non-profit organisation based in the United States that was founded to provide North Koreans with access to uncensored information and media, said in report issued this week.

Most of the knowledge needed to hack the phones came from North Koreans who had been sent to China for work, often in software outsourcing businesses, the report said.

North Korean workers queue for a flight to Pyongyang at an airport in Beijing in 2019. Most of the knowledge needed to hack the phones came from North Koreans who had been sent to China for work, the report said. Photo: AFP

Smartphones have proliferated in North Korea, but very few people are allowed to access the global internet. Devices in the country are required to have government apps and other controls that monitor use and restrict access.

Working together with ERNW, a Germany-based independent IT Security service, the report’s authors examined North Korean smartphones and tablets for government controls, and interviewed two defectors who said they had been able to circumvent those restrictions before they fled the country.

The research overturns assumptions that, shut off from the internet, North Koreans lacked the knowledge and tools to be able to mount an effective attack on state information control mechanisms, the report concluded.