Voice of Korea mid-2014 schedule
Mar 27th
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, March 30.
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.
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, More >
DPRK organizations called out for censorship
Mar 13th
Three of North Korea’s state security and censorship organizations have been called out by Reporters Without Borders in the organization’s latest ranking of “Enemies of the Internet.”
The report was published on Wednesday, which RSF and Amnesty International have named world day against cyber censorship.
The three organizations named by RSF are the Central Scientific and Technological Information Agency, which runs the domestic intranet system, Group 109, which attempts to police distribution of illegal foreign content, and Bureau 27, which monitors cell phones and radio broadcasts.
RSF calls Group 109 “censorship’s elite force” and draws on testimony provided to the United Nations that claims More >
Inside North Korea’s cell phone use
Mar 12th
North Koreans used cell phone messaging to independently organize a soccer group, surprising authorities, according to a new report on cell phone usage in the country.
The soccer club was apparently organized by a group at Kim Chaek University of Technology in Pyongyang, and could be one of the reasons that pushed authorities to launch a regional cell phone service that was more restrictive than previous offerings, said the report by Kim Yonho, a journalist with the Voice of America.
The report, “Cell Phones in North Korea,” was earlier this month by the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS, the Johns Hopkins School of International More >
DPRK military could turn to cyber-warfare for lower costs
Mar 7th
North Korea’s military could turn to cyber-based attacks and weapons as a more cost-effective alternative to conventional weapons, the U.S. Department of Defense says in a new report.
But the annual report to Congress on “Military and Security Developments Involving the DPRK” is also a lot more cautious in blaming North Korea for a series of recent cyber attacks that have targeted South Korea.
Unlike the statements and reports that comes from the South Korean government, the North’s capability to launch attacks isn’t even stated as a certainty by the DoD.
“North Korea probably has a military offensive cyber operations (OCO) capability,” it says in More >
Red Star 3.0 desktop images posted
Mar 3rd
If you want to give your computer desktop a touch of North Korea’s Red Star Linux without installing the operating system, now you can.
Will Scott, the computer scientist who brought back a copy of the new operating system last year, has posted the desktop background images from Red Star 3.0 to a Google+ album.
The look and feel of Red Star has been updated to resemble closely that of Apple’s Mac OS X, but the desktop backgrounds have a distinctly North Korean feel.
There are eight in the set, including this one below, and you can download individual images or grab the More >
Lost phone found in Pyongyang?
Feb 28th
A smartphone that was lost in South Korea has apparently surfaced in Pyongyang.
A South Korean Internet used posted a screenshot from Google’s Android Device Manager that shows the phone on Sungri Street (승리거리) in Pyongyang. The page says the location accuracy is 75 meters.
Curtis Melvin, author of North Korea Economy Watch and authority on places in the DPRK, told me Sungri Street runs through the central district in Pyongyang. It’s marked on Google Maps and is the road that dissects Kim Il Sung Square.
It hasn’t been possible to verify the story, but the SHV-E210S is the model name of a Samsung Galaxy More >
A new look at North Korea
Feb 25th
A 2007 image from NASA shows the Korean peninsula at night (NASA)
Most people who read this blog will be familiar with the image of the two Koreas at nighttime by a NASA satellite
On January 30, 2014, an astronaut on the International Space Station used a Nikon D3S camera to capture a new image of the Korean peninsula at 10:16 pm — one that’s even more dramatic than the monochrome NASA satellite image of old.
As NASA says, “The darkened land appears as if it were a patch of water joining the Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan. Its capital city, More >
Sochi Olympics coverage on KCTV
Feb 14th
Every time the Olympics or World Cup com around, there’s the question of whether viewers in the DPRK will be able to see the major sporting events.
North Korea’s KCTV often manages to air portions of the events, but only with technical assistance from other organizations.
And so this year, for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, North Koreans are able to watch thanks to a tie-up with the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union, an organization that ties together major broadcasters across Asia, and South Korea’s KBS.
The two have agreed to provide North Korean state broadcaster Korean Radio and Television (KRT) with sports rights for More >
DPRK again one from bottom on press freedom ranking
Feb 12th
North Korea has held on to its position as the second-worst country in the world for press freedoms, according to the latest annual survey by Reporters Without Borders.
The report, published on Wednesday, put North Korea at position 179.
During 2013, the country was singled out for particular criticism by the group for media coverage of the arrest, trial and execution of Jang Song Thaek.
State media went into overdrive during the event, describing Jang’s alleged crimes in detail and denouncing him for them.
At the time, the press freedom group said the coverage was “tantamount to mass intimidation” and that “such an atmosphere of terror will More >
Internet coming to Kaesong Industrial Zone
Feb 10th
Officials from North and South Korea have come to an agreement that should allow limited Internet access inside the Kaesong Industrial Zone, the jointly-run manufacturing complex just north of the inter-Korean border.
The agreement was reached during talks on Friday, according to reports quoting South Korea’s Unification Ministry.
South Korean managers who work at the factories in the industrial park will be able to get Internet connections once a link is installed by South Korea’s KT and North Korea’s Korea Posts and Telecommunications Co. (KPTC).
The industrial zone is home to over 100 South Korean-owned factories.
The agreement comes weeks after the two sides installed a More >
