Media
KCNA confirms website, new address
Jan 22nd
Korea Central News Agency confirmed for the first time on Saturday that a recently launched website carrying its news is the agency’s official site.
KCNA news has been available on the Internet for several years via a handful of sites, but all have been run by third parties outside the country.
On Saturday, the agency posted a notice in its daily news mentioning the site:
“The Korean Central News Agency would like to express thanks to all the visitors to its website. The KCNA has the honor to inform the visitors that its website address has been changed: IP address 175.45.176.58.”
North Korea Tech More >
KCNA switches IP addresses
Jan 21st
The recently-launched website of the Korea Central News Agency has jumped to a new IP address. This move explains some of the downtime the site has suffered in the last few days.
The site can now be accessed at http://175.45.176.58. The DNS records haven’t been updated yet, so the star.edu.kp domain name doesn’t work at time of writing. It still points to the old address.
South Korea’s Internet firewall has also not yet been updated, so the site is currently accessible from South Korea. It had previously been blocked by Seoul.
The North Korean Website List has been updated with this information.
More >
FNK Radio attracts North Korean Internet audience
Jan 18th
Free North Korea Radio, one of the handful of independent broadcasters targeting North Korea, attracted a direct connection to its website from inside the DPRK on Wednesday morning.
The site said an incoming connection from North Korea was recorded between 9:30am and 10am on Wednesday morning. It included the following screenshot (see below) from its site showing a connection from what appears to be within the North Korean IP address range that’s recently been activated by Star JV.
Star’s IP addresses run from 175.45.176.0 to 175.45.179.255.
Free North Korea Radio, based in Seoul and run by defectors from the north, broadcasts programming critical of More >
Expansion at Pyongyang TV Tower
Jan 12th
There appears to have been a significant expansion of communications capability at Pyongyang TV tower over the last decade. Analysis of satellite imagery through Google Earth shows big expansion of a neighboring building and the addition of multiple satellite dishes. (See the bottom of this post for updates.)
Here’s what the building looked like on June 3, 2000, which is the earliest image available in Google Earth. To its west two satellite dishes are visible. The TV Tower is just to the east of this building and you can see the top of the tower on the right-hand side of the More >
KCNA launches video news
Jan 2nd
The Korean Central News Agency carried video news for the first time on its new home page on Jan. 1, 2011. Two video clips were posted as part of the daily news offering.
The first shows scenes from around Pyongyang, including families visiting the Mansudae Grand Monument, while the second includes more shots of the city and comments from a government official identified as Kim Pyong O, a department director in the Ministry of Light Industry, on the New Year editorial.
A close-up of the newspaper page clearly shows the date as Jan. 1. Of course, it’s possible to fake such a shot, More >
Joint editorial calls for expansion of CNC
Jan 1st
North Korea called for a significant effort to modernize and build up its light industry sector this year in a joint editorial published in newspapers on Saturday.
“Light industry is the major front in the general offensive of this year,” said an English-language translation of the editorial carried by KCNA. “To accelerate the development of light industry is a mature requirement and most pressing task for building the country into an economic giant.”
“We should make sure that this year, a year of light industry, the whole country seethes with efforts to give priority to and concentrate everything on the sector of More >
Rodong Sinmun on IT psychological warfare
Dec 16th
Rodong Sinmun, the DPRK’s national daily newspaper of the Workers’ Party of Korea, attacked the U.S. on Tuesday for “waging a vicious psychological warfare on the basis of modern science and technology.”
The article, an English synopsis of which was reported by KCNA, said the U.S. is using it to attack “anti-imperialist independent countries.”
It’s the first time in a while that psychological warfare has come up on KCNA, but the article is frustratingly lacking in specifics of the specific actions it is complaining about.
U.S. intelligence gathering bodies and their affiliated institutions are now busy widely using modern scientific and technological means More >
High-quality recordings of DPRK radio
Dec 14th
Mark Fahey in Australia wrote to let me know about a project he’s working on that involves the capture of hours of North Korean radio via satellite. The broadcasts of the Korean Central Broadcasting Station domestic service via Thaicom are much higher quality than anything that’s generally available online, including my recordings from shortwave. Here’s what he says:
I am currently capturing hundreds of hours of TV & radio programming from North Korea as part of an academic project I am involved in. Yesterday I spent time digitally capturing the central domestic radio service as broadcast on 819kHz in Pyongyang. I thought More >
KCNA refreshes its website
Dec 4th
The Korean Central News Agency website that appears to be hosted from inside North Korea has been given a redesign. The new page has a fresher feel and makes much more use of pictures than the previous site, which was first discovered in early October.
Also new is the addition of Korean-language articles to the previously-available English and Spanish news.
The front page includes an image, the day’s headlines and links to seven category menus. I had problems with some of the links and the menus when accessed via Firefox, but they function with Internet Explorer.
It still has to be accessed via an More >
Voice of Korea on Yeonpyeong shelling
Nov 24th
The Voice of Korea, the DPRK’s international shortwave radio service, broadcast on Nov. 24 its first report in English on the shelling of Yeonpyeong island.
The shelling occurred on the afternoon of Nov. 23 and the radio report comes 24 hours after a similar report was carried in English on the Korea Central News Agency wire.
The lateness of the report highlights the Voice of Korea’s rigid daily programming, which changes only once per day.
The report is very similar to the KCNA bulletin, although there are differences. It’s either been rewritten for radio delivery or been translated from the original Korean by More >
