Martyn Williams
This user hasn't shared any biographical information
Homepage: http://www.northkoreatech.org
Posts by Martyn Williams
Summer radio broadcasts to DPRK
Apr 10th
The various public and private radio stations that aim broadcasts at North Korea have just refreshed their broadcast schedules for the summer season.
In addition to the publicly-funded outlets, there are several private stations. Their editorial balance at the stations differ although none are pro-regime stations. Some are jammed by North Korea making reception difficult — but not impossible — inside the country.
Given the right conditions, the broadcasts should be audible across a wide swarth of Asia.
All times at UTC and all broadcasts in Korea unless noted.
== International Broadcasters ==
1200 to 1300 (2100 to 2200 local) on 1,188kHz, 7,225kHz, 9,490kHz More >
DPRK reconfigures its Internet connection
Apr 9th
Hot on the heels of a series of attacks that have seen its Internet connectivity severely disrupted, the DPRK appears to be adding an additional route through which it links to the global Internet.
The new link began appearing in Internet addressing tables on Monday and connects from Star, the country’s sole Internet service provider, to China Unicom Hong Kong’s network.
Most of the Internet traffic to and from the country already runs over a link from mainland China that is serviced by China Unicom. Almost exactly a year ago, a second connection was added via Intelsat satellite.
The new connection appears to More >
Uriminzokkiri restoring after hack
Apr 7th
This week’s hack of the Uriminzokkiri website certainly raised the bar in the cyber battle currently playing out online.
It marked the first time in the current round of attacks that anyone had managed to break in and deface a North Korean website. Over the last couple of weeks, several sites have been taken offline by denial of service attacks, but such attacks simply impede the website’s ability to serve pages and don’t affect the content.
This time around the attack saw the site removed and its Twitter and Flickr channels accessed. The Flickr channel is back under a new account, it appears More >
Uriminzokkiri, companion websites hacked
Apr 4th
Uriminzokkiri, a China-based North Korean news website with close ties to Pyongyang, has been hacked. The site is currently inaccessible, companion websites have also been attacked and defaced, and it’s Twitter feed and Flickr pages have also been broken into.
The hack came hours after a list of apparently 9,000 registered users of the site was posted to the Internet.
The list contained user names, real names, email addresses, birth dates and other information including hashed passwords, which are the result of a process where a password is passed through an algorithm to disguise it. The attackers had apparently been able to break More >
Voice of Korea on KPA nuclear statement
Apr 4th
The Korean People’s Army statement issued through KCNA on Thursday threatening nuclear weapons use in retaliation for any U.S. attack was repeated on the Voice of Korea shortwave radio program of the DPRK the same day, but it didn’t rank anywhere near the top news of the day.
Leading off the English-language newscast was details of the plenary meeting of the central committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea. The news then progressed to a number of new laws passed by the Supreme People’s Assembly. Item five on the nuclear weapons law might be of interest to some.
The army statement came More >
Hackers claim 15,000 Uriminzokkiri user records
Apr 2nd
A hacker or hackers working under the umbrella of “Anonymous” claims to have broken into Uriminzokkiri.com, the North Korean-run site based in China, and taken over 15,000 user records.
A message posted online makes the claim and includes details for six accounts, apparently showing user names, e-mail addresses, birth dates, and hashed passwords.
These are passwords that have been run through an algorithm to come out as something that contains the essence of it. It’s an alternative to storing the password in plain text and helps guard against losing passwords during hacks like the one apparently conducted on Uriminzokkiri.com.
Of the six users, More >
Voice of Korea mid 2013 full schedule
Apr 2nd
Voice of Korea switched to its mid-2013 broadcasting schedule as of March 31. A couple of days ago I published the frequencies for English-language programs based on my own monitoring, and now we have the full plan for all languages.
The broadcasts follow the same basic line-up each day.
:00 Opening signal, station identification: “This is Voice of Korea” :01 National Anthem :03 Song of General Kim Il Sung :06 Song of General Kim Jong Il :09 News, editorials (approx 15 minutes, but can be extended to full broadcast), followed by music :30 Reminiscences of Great Leader President Kim Il Sung of More >
State Space Development Bureau established
Apr 2nd
Signaling that it intends to pursue space exploration and the launch of more satellites, the DPRK’s parliament on Monday voted to establish a State Space Development Bureau.
The Supreme People’s Assembly on Monday also voted into effect a law on space development, reported KCNA without detailing the law.
The news was reported by KCNA but there were few details on the bureau or who would head it. The Korean Committee of Space Technology had previously been the top body on space development and whether it will continue was also not clear.
The decision of the SPA was reported in brief form by the state-run news More >
More attacks pledged on North Korean websites
Apr 1st
People who apparently took part in this weekend’s denial of service attacks against several major North Korean websites have promised there’s more to come.
The attacks hit sites including KCNA, Voice of Korea, the Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Nations and Air Koryo. They also targeted the Korean Friendship Association’s site although I wasn’t able to verify whether it went down.
A denial of service attack involves flooding a web server with so much traffic that it becomes overloaded and cannot respond to legitimate requests for pages. It’s different from the site being hacked, although the end result is similar in More >
New Voice of Korea English schedule
Mar 31st
North Korea’s external shortwave radio broadcaster, Voice of Korea, joins many of the world’s international broadcasters in switching to a summer frequency schedule on Sunday.
Shortwave broadcasts change frequencies numerous times during the day to take advantage of atmospheric conditions that help their broadcasts can reach the intended targets. For this reason, it’s important to know when and where a station will appear.
Based on on-air announcements, this is the new schedule for English-language broadcasts that goes into effect on Sunday and will last for roughly the next six months.
All times are in UTC (GMT) and all frequencies in kilohertz.
0400-0500 to North More >
