Websites
WRN ending Voice of Korea on-demand audio
Dec 5th
High-quality audio streams from the Voice of Korea, North Korea’s international broadcaster, will soon be gone from the web.
The recordings, which are available in five languages, have been offered by London-based World Radio Network since July this year, but the company is shutting down its on-demand service on December 15.
The move is part of an effort by WRN to refocus its efforts on its core service aimed at radio stations. WRN carries programming from major international broadcasters such as Deutsche Welle, KBS World Radio, Radio Prague and Radio New Zealand and redistributes them to AM and FM stations around the world. The online service More >
DPRK joins maritime satellite organization
Dec 4th
North Korea recently joined an international organization that overseas safety and security satellite communications services for mariners.
The country became the 98th nation to join the International Maritime Satellite Organization (IMSO) when it acceded on October 15, according to a statement from the organization.
The IMSO is charged with overseeing public safety and security services on the Inmarsat series of satellites. Inmarsat operates a global network of satellites primarily aimed at the world’s oceans, which are areas where traditional satellite services don’t have great coverage.
Among the services under the remit of the IMSO is that of the Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT) More >
KCNA web traffic uncovered
Nov 23rd
A Washington, D.C.-based journalist and blogger has managed to obtain details on web traffic to the Korean Central News Agency’s website thanks to poor security on a previous version of the site.
Writing on his blog, Dino Beslagic said he was able to access the site traffic data through a hidden interface page on the KCNA website. Rather than block off access with a firewall, the site allowed access to the page after simply acknowledged a pop-up window.
Access to the data enabled Beslagic to produce a graph of daily visitors and number of hits for the period from April 2011 to More >
KCNA adds higher resolution images
Oct 30th
This image appeared on the KCNA website on October 10 and is 400×276 pixels (click to enlarge)
Regular visitors to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) might have noticed something different about the site in the last few days. The North Korean state-run news agency has begun publishing higher resolution photographers alongside articles.
The change was first noted by Frank Feinstein, the New Zealand-based researcher who runs the KCNA Watch service.
The most recent images offered by KCNA are more than double the resolution of previous images at 900 pixels by 620 pixels. In the past they were a relatively low 400 pixels by More >
South suspects North Korean hackers hit on June 25
Jul 17th
The South Korean government says it suspects hackers in North Korea were behind a series of cyber attacks last month.
The attacks took place on June 25, the anniversary of the beginning of the Korean war, and continued for several days. When they began, several South Korean government and private-run websites were defaced or taken offline.
The main evidence behind the South’s accusations was the discovery of an IP address linked to North Korea and similarities in software code between the June 25 attack and previous attacks, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, said Tuesday.
IP addresses are unique numeric identifiers More >
Hackers attack North, South Korean websites
Jun 25th
The previously announced June 25 attack on North Korean websites by hackers working under the “Anonymous” name took an unexpected turn on Tuesday when several South Korean sites were hit with attacks. The actions coincided with the release of what hackers said were stolen files on American military personnel.
The North Korean attack did start as scheduled and appears to have been initially successful. Most major North Korean websites are either inaccessible or difficult to access, indicating they are being hit by a denial of service attack. This involves overwhelming a web server with requests so it gets tied up and More >
Anonymous counts down to planned DPRK cyber attack
Jun 24th
Members of the international hacking collective Anonymous look set to launch a planned cyber attack on North Korean Internet properties at midnight local Korean time on Monday night.
The group has also promised to make public some details of documents gained from a claimed attack on North Korean internal servers.
In messages posted to Twitter on Monday, Anonymous members indicated the countdown for the next stage in their “OpNorthKorea” series of attacks is unchanged.
A Twitter message posted by an Anonymous member posted at around 1pm Korea time on Monday.
The exact nature of the attacks is not known, but Anonymous typically uses denial of More >
WRN ends Voice of Korea relays
Jun 22nd
London-based World Radio Network appears to have ended its relays of the Voice of Korea, North Korea’s international shortwave radio service.
The broadcasts appeared in May and were being recorded by WRN from Voice of Korea’s daily English-language shortwave broadcasts. Voice of Korea puts out a daily hour-long program in English each day and it’s relayed several times to listeners around the globe.
The shortwave signal meant sometimes poor audio quality, but the WRN website was the only place on the Internet offering the program on-demand. Voice of Korea’s own website has news and music clips but not the entire broadcast.
At the time, WRN More >
KCTV Facebook page deleted, but streams live on
Jun 14th
A Facebook page that claimed to be the official home of North’s Korea’s main national TV channel, Korean Central Television, has disappeared.
The page appeared to have been around for at least a month and content included links to KCTV news bulletins on the YouTube channel of the China-based Uriminzokkiri website, photos and stories from the government’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and some “behind the scenes” pictures from the TV station.
It was written as if it was being run from within the TV station in Pyongyang — something that appears to have fooled several major international news agencies — but More >
Live from Pyongyang, it’s KCTV on Facebook … or maybe not
Jun 10th
On Thursday, South Korea’s Yonhap reported on a new Facebook page in the name of the Korean Central Television, North Korea’s national TV station. (Updated. See below.)
Yonhap said, “North Korea’s state broadcaster started real-time Facebook broadcasting as the communist country moves to expand its propaganda efforts into the social networking realm, official sources said Thursday.”
In never divulged who the “official sources” were beyond describing them as people “who keep tabs on the North.”
Later in the day, Agence France Presse reported the same Facebook page, reporting on the news of Kim Jong Un’s visit to a mushroom farm in the first news bulletin of More >
