Posts tagged KCNA
North Korea attacks US funding of anti-censorship projects
May 26th
North Korea’s state-run news agency issued a sharp criticism over the weekend of U.S. funding of technology projects that attack censorship.
The commentary, published on Saturday, points to dissatisfaction among the North Korean elite with U.S. funding of projects that enable the free flow of information and bypass Internet censorship.
It comes as U.S. State Dept.’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) is evaluating proposals for its latest round of funding aimed at human rights and democracy in North Korea. The DRL is offering up to $350,000 to organizations for projects targeted at the DPRK.
North Korea maintains one of the most formidable state-sanctioned censorship regimes in the More >
Pyongyang building collapse underlines North Korea’s news blockade
May 20th
The revelation by North Korean state media on Sunday that Pyongyang suffered a major construction accident underlines how strong the regime’s grip on information flow remains, despite cracks appearing in recent years.
The accident occurred on Tuesday, according to the domestic media reports, but the world didn’t hear anything about the incident until those first reports were published on Sunday. By then, the rescue efforts had been completed and, apparent from images, the site had already been cleared of all debris.
The reports were unclear about the exact accident and number of casualties, but it appears likely an entire apartment block collapsed More >
IJuche app banned in South Korea
Jan 18th
A recently-launched iPhone app that delivers articles from the Korean Central News Agency to iPhones and iPads has been banned in South Korea.
The app, iJuche, was developed and published in late 2013 and was highlighted on NorthKoreaTech earlier this week. That publicity was apparently enough to get it blocked.
“I just got a call from a person at Apple informing me that iJuche has been found to be in violation of South Korea’s “National Security Law” and has been removed from the South Korean App Store,” said Peter Curtis, the developer of the app.
Users in South Korea that have already downloaded a More >
App lets you keep up with KCNA on iPhone, iPad
Jan 14th
If you use an Apple iPhone or iPad, there’s a new app that lets you stay current with news from the Korean Central News Agency.
IJuche is the product of work by Peter Curtis, who says he became fascinated with the DPRK after reading Andrew Holloway’s “A Year in Pyongyang.”
“When I decided that I wanted to try my hand at iOS app development, I asked myself what sort of app I’d like to see on my iPhone and iPad that nobody else had written already,” he said.
And so came the idea to focus on North Korea.
“As your readers most likely know, More >
“Mass intimidation” from DPRK media on Jang’s execution
Dec 20th
North Korean state media’s coverage of the arrest, trial and subsequent execution of Jang Song Thaek was “tantamount to mass intimidation,” Reporters Without Borders said on Thursday.
“Although only to be expected from one of the world’s worst dictatorships, such manipulation of news and information is disturbing,” the Paris-based group said in a statement.
“The extensive and indeed staged coverage of this execution coinciding with the hyped coverage of the second anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s death had the hallmarks of a intimidatory message to the entire Korean population and the international community.”
One of the things that made Jang’s arrest notable was the way it was More >
North Korean media announces execution of Jang
Dec 13th
High-level purges in North Korea have been typically quiet affairs in the past. Rumors would circulate that someone had been removed from office, state media would be analyzed for mentions of the person’s name and confirmation would usually only come months or years later when they either reemerged or someone else appeared in a position they used to fill.
Page 2 of the Rodong Sinmun for December 13, 2013
So the announcement through state media that Jang Song Thaek had been executed is quite stunning in its openness.
The Korean Central News Agency carried the news early on Friday, December 13, while the Rodong More >
Full text of KCNA announcement on execution of Jang
Dec 13th
The Korean Central News Agency issued the following on December 13, 2013. The English version of the article was issued in two takes. The first take runs about half the length of the full story until the “(more)” below. The story was then updated with the second half.
So when the story originally ran, only the headline referred to Jang’s execution. Details and the speed at which it was performed did not appear until the update, which runs to some 2,749 words.
Here it is in full:
Traitor Jang Song Thaek Executed
Pyongyang, December 13 (KCNA) — Upon hearing the report on the enlarged More >
KCNA deleted, then restored old reports on Jang
Dec 11th
News reports that centered on Jang Song Thaek were deleted from the Korean Central News Agency’s website in the hours before state media announced his removal from power on Monday.
The reports vanished from the Korean-language portion of the site at around 5am Korean time on Monday (8pm GMT Sunday), said Frank Feinstein, a New Zealand-based researcher who runs the KCNA Watch service.
He said only the reports in which Jang was a central character were removed. Others that mentioned him in passing remained on the KCNA website. Feinstein was using his own index of KCNA articles as a reference to the original URLs.
“This 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 >
