Seoul eyes harsher crackdown on “pro-NK” websites
Oct 14th
South Korean prosecutors are launching a crackdown on websites and users judged to be posting “pro-North Korean” material, according to several local press reports.
The action comes as regulators judge the amount of such material available to South Korean citizens has “mushroomed to a risky level,” according to prosecutors quoted by Yonhap News said.
North Korea’s state-run media outlets have spent the last year launching several propaganda-filled sites that report on aspects of life in the country and extol the benefits of the country’s political system and its leaders. The outlets have also expanded onto social media with Twitter, Facebook and YouTube channels.
The ease with More >
RSF reports on media in North Korea
Oct 11th
Reporters Without Borders has published a detailed report on the North Korean media landscape. The report is the result of of a fact-finding trip to Seoul in July by an RSF staffer and concludes that North Korea is no longer as sealed off from the outside world as it used to be.
Shortwave radio broadcasts from foreign stations, CDs and DVDs of South Korean TV broadcasts, data smuggled over the Chinese border and USB keys dropped by balloon are all creating cracks in the wall of isolation that has surrounded North Korea for decades, said the report.
It also called on the South Korean More >
Pyongyang is not happy about foreign radio broadcasts
Oct 6th
North Korea’s state-run news agency has hit out against propaganda radio broadcasts targeted at the country.
(This post has been updated. See below)
In a commentary published on Wednesday, the Korean Central News Agency criticized the broadcasts for using “the same frequency band as used by the TV broadcasting in the DPRK and conducting its anti-DPRK radio propaganda with the same radio frequency band as used in the DPRK.”
North Korea is targeted by a handful of overseas radio stations that largely transmit on shortwave frequencies to reach listeners in the country. Some of the stations, including South Korea’s KBS and Seoul-based Open Radio for North Korea, More >
Kim Han-Sol’s Internet footprint
Oct 3rd
The teenager believed to be the 16 year-old grandson of Kim Jong Il has scrambling to delete or block access to his Internet social media accounts after news spread of his admission into a Bosnian school.
Attention was focused on the accounts — one on Facebook and two on Twitter — after South Korean media reported that Kim Han Sol had been accepted into the United World College in Mostar, Bosnia.
Pictures posted on the social media services, including the one to the right, were published by South Korean media organizations before access was restricted. The images and comments written by Kim Han More >
AP expands KRT video deal to high-def
Sep 30th
The Associated Press has signed a deal with North Korean state television that gives it exclusive rights to high-definition video of major news events in the country.
The deal comes as AP and its biggest competitor, Reuters, race to expand their access to North Korea ahead of the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth — an event that is expected to see large scale celebrations and events in Pyongyang around April 15.
The new deal lasts three years and makes London-based APTN (Associated Press Television News) “the only agency to transmit broadcast-quality HD pictures of key news events in North Korea,” More >
‘I’ is for the Internet he bans
Sep 26th
Kim Jong Il made a surprise appearance on the season premiere edition of Fox TV’s “The Simpsons” on Sunday night. And so did “the Internet he banned.”
The episode, which marked the beginning of the 23rd season of the hit animated show, features a former CIA agent called Wayne. Played by Kiefer Sutherland, Wayne becomes a security guard at the nuclear power plant and eventually saves Homer’s life.
It’s right at the end of the show that he reveals he was “in a North Korean prison being forced to write a musical about Kim Jong Il with a car battery hooked up More >
South Korea’s online blocking sharply rose in 2010
Sep 18th
The number of requests by South Korean police for the deletion of Internet content alleged to be pro-North Korean has soared in the past two years, according to a report in the Dong-A Ilbo.
Police submitted 80,449 requests to the Korea Communications Standards Commission for the removal of online postings in 2010. That compares to 14,430 in 2009 and just 1,793 in 2008 and represents a 45-fold increase over the last two years, the newspaper said.
The annual deletions of North Korean content were pretty constant during the middle of the last decade at between 1,000 and 1,500 per year. They began More >
Tuning the FM dial in Pyongyang
Sep 16th
Switch on an FM radio in Pyongyang and there isn’t much to listen to, according to a scan of the FM band by a recent visitor to the country.
Mark Fahey found just two radio stations available, although one was repeated on multiple frequencies.
Pyongyang FM Broadcasting (Pyongyang FM Pangsong) was broadcasting on 105.2 MHz. Mark said the station, “opened each morning with a few minutes of test tone, an interval signal and that the 6AM time signal.”
Here’s a recording Mark provided of the start of broadcasts on August 16. You can hear the station ID as “Pyongyang FM Pangsong imnida” (This More >
Group plans satellite TV to North Korea
Sep 14th
A private South Korean group is planning to raise US$46 million to fund the launch of a satellite TV station aimed at North Korea, according to a report by VOA News.
Unification TV, which could be on the air as early as next year, plans to beam South Korean dramas and other entertainment programs, according to the report. It will be launched by Korean Peninsula Vision and Unification.
The chairman of the operation, Bong Doo-wan, told VOA that broadcasting will be the best way to quickly achieve the ethnic unification that is desired by the South Korean public.
Bong is probably right that More >
Report: Stronger GPS jammer developed
Sep 9th
North Korea has developed a powerful jammer that can disrupt GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite signals over a range of “more than 100 kilometers,” according to a South Korean government report, Yonhap News said Tuesday.
News of the jamming equipment was included in a report submitted to South Korea’s parliamentary committee on defense this week, the news agency said.
The South Korean capital lies about 50 kilometers from the border region so a jammer with such range could disrupt or wipe out GPS signals in Seoul and the surrounding area. The city and region up to the border is littered with military More >
