A smartphone smuggled out of North Korea is offering a rare – and unsettling – glimpse into the extent of control Kim Jong Un’s regime exerts over its citizens, down to the very words they type. While the device appears outwardly similar to any modern smartphone, its software reveals a far more oppressive reality. The phone was featured in a BBC video, which showed it powering on with an animated North Korean flag waving across the screen. While the report did not specify the brand, the design and user interface closely resembled those of a Huawei or Honor device.
It’s unclear whether these companies officially sell phones in North Korea, but if they do, the devices are likely customized with state-approved software designed to restrict functionality and facilitate government surveillance.
One of the more revealing – and darkly amusing – features was the phone’s automatic censorship of words deemed problematic by the state. For instance, when users typed oppa, a South Korean term used to refer to an older brother or a boyfriend, the phone automatically replaced it with comrade. A warning would then appear, admonishing the user that oppa could only refer to an older sibling.
Typing “South Korea” would trigger another change. The phrase was automatically replaced with “puppet state,” reflecting the language used in official North Korean rhetoric.
Then came the more unsettling features. The phone silently captured a screenshot every five minutes, storing the images in a hidden folder that users couldn’t access. According to the BBC, authorities could later review these images to monitor the user’s activity.
The device was smuggled out of North Korea by Daily NK, a Seoul-based media outlet specializing in North Korean affairs. After examining the phone, the BBC confirmed that the censorship mechanisms were deeply embedded in its software. Experts say this technology is designed not only to control information but also to reinforce state messaging at the most personal level.
Smartphone usage has grown in North Korea in recent years, but access remains tightly controlled. Devices cannot connect to the global internet and are subject to intense government surveillance.
The regime has reportedly intensified efforts to eliminate South Korean cultural influence, which it views as subversive. So-called “youth crackdown squads” have been deployed to enforce these rules, frequently stopping young people on the streets to inspect their phones and review text messages for banned language.
Some North Korean escapees have shared that exposure to South Korean dramas or foreign radio broadcasts played a key role in their decision to flee the country. Despite the risks, outside media continues to be smuggled in – often via USB sticks and memory cards hidden in food shipments. Much of this effort is supported by foreign organizations.
Sounds like windows recall…
Better than recall. No need for special hardware like an NPU, nor does it keep asking you to sign in.
/s
An NPU isn’t required for something like recall, it just makes running local models more efficient.
frequently stopping young people on the streets to inspect their phones and review text messages for banned language
I’m really tired of people saying “both sides are the same” when it comes to western capitalist exploitation vs eastern totalitarian authoritarianism.
It’s ironically so privileged to even make the comparison because if it were the same, you wouldn’t have been allowed to make this comment.
I didn’t say both sides are the same. I made a stupid joke about a garbage operating system and the garbage company that runs it.
And your example of stopping people on the streets to inspect their phones doesn’t really do a great job at making the argument you’re trying to make. We have ICE running around and throwing people into contracted prisons even when they have proof of citizenship. We are trafficking people to foreign concentration camps. We are rocketing at light speed to a techno fascist authoritarian state and the level of surveillance we are under is increasing at a mind boggling pace.
So we aren’t the same, and the people currently in charge are striving to make the differences smaller every day.
I made a stupid joke
Nah, the joke was fine. They overreacted.
I totally agree. Stuff like Microsoft recall is not great and America under Trump neither, but it is nothing compared to North Korea. That is a hellhole nobody who grew up in a free western society really can even imagine.
Frequently the point of comparing the two is to caution before they actually become comparable, though. I think it’s intentional hyperbole to make a stark point, not an insensitive reduction.
I’d rather live in NK then in Gaza: the West loves to create hellholes, and the US has the most prisoners of any country on earth so calling it a ‘free society’ is pretty rich.
More to the point, if any Western country had done to it what NK had done to it by the West during the Korean war, it would turn into a brutal basket case far worse then anything NK could imagine. Things like 9/11 and October 7 turn Westerners into frothing omnicidal maniacs, and those are completely negligible in scope compared to what the west has done to other countries, including Korea.
I agree, western capitalist exploitation is far worse, but privileged liberals in the imperial core aren’t the main victim, and they only care if their billionaire owned media tells them to.
Although I dislike recall as much as anyone else, this is quite a bit worse.
From the article:
Then came the more unsettling features. The phone silently captured a screenshot every five minutes, storing the images in a hidden folder that users couldn’t access. According to the BBC, authorities could later review these images to monitor the user’s activity.
Recall stores an image every few seconds. 5 minutes is indeed much worse. Think of all the content they’re missing!
How? If authorities seize your computer, don’t you think the recall screenshots is the first they will look at?
For sure. But at least those images aren’t kept in a secret location where users can’t see or delete them. Even if Recall makes this harder, there’s a meaningful difference here.
That said, neither one is doing you any privacy favors…
Has everyone forgotten about the NSA and their absurdly massive data centers? At least a portion of the US population likely has substantial data from their tech in a database we can’t access.
Sure, but at least from a technical POV those screenshots are accessible to the users, can be deleted/manipulated and the user is not forced to have the feature enabled
I don’t see how this is worse.
Oh Windows recall beta.
That’s the difference between North Korea and the western world:
In North Korea the government forces spyware onto your device.
In the western world, people share their data voluntarily and publicly.
Instagram, Facebook, Dropbox and Co. made it possible.
There is no better regime than the West in this regard. Force things on people? You’re gonna risk a revolt or dissent. ‘Subtly’ make people dependent on your product so they’ll voluntarily use it and share everything with you while you ‘subtly’ control the algorithm in your favour? Now that’s perfect. Social media is the ultimate tool of power and governance.
Although North Korea is a very “successful” oppressive regime, largely able to have full control over information both in and out of the country and to greatly limit desertion. I can’t think of a “better” regime in this regard.
You’re gonna cook up a crazy theory like that and not even mention big daddy capitalism?
And I definitely believe a NED sponsored SK site and the BBC. /s
Don’t worry, the western governments also do it
Shhh don’t tell them that American Corporations have been doing that for years.
https://newatlas.com/computers/smartphone-listening-conversations-ads-facebook/
I was going to say “that article mostly just seems to just debunk the ‘my phone is always listening to me’ conspiracy theory” but then I got to the part about over 50% of analyzed Android apps having permission to take screenshots :/
Out of over 17,000 Android apps examined, more than 9,000 had potential permissions to take screenshots. And a number of apps were found to actively be doing so, taking screenshots and sending them to third-party sources.
this is a weird paragraph. no permission is needed for an app to take screenshots of itself. all apps can do that.
just an example: the Element matrix client has a bugreport feature that allows you to submit an automatically created screenshot of the previous menu.
it seems there are several ways to accomplish this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2661536/how-to-programmatically-take-a-screenshot-on-android
This is why my TV is on a separate VLAN (with no internet access) and I use an Nvidia Shield for streaming. I haven’t seen any indication that the Shield does anything like this.
Yeah, there is no reason for me to be connecting my TV to the internet. I use a HTPC which is much better for streaming than the TV’s built-in apps.
All mobile manufacturers could be doing this too. All of the SoCs are proprietary black boxes as are the modems.
laughs in PinePho–
Sorry, my battery died as I was typing that
That secret screenshot folder would eat up your storage quite fast, and it would be known, from whistleblowers, workers having to check the screenshots, “proof coming out from it” etc etc etc
There is certainly validity in the concept that no known instance of exploitation exists. However that is only anecdotal. The potential exists. Naïve trust in others has a terrible track record on these scales of ethics. Every instruction and register should be fully documented for every product sold.
An adequate webp image is only a few tens of kilobytes. Most people now have a bridged connection between their home network and cellular, unless they go out of their way to block it. Periodic screenshots are rather crazy. It would be much easier to target specific keywords and patterns.
Well are we putting people in prison with the help of them? A secret screenshot folder nobody can exploit isn’t very useful …
Not saying it can’t be done (you are of course right there), we hand it over freely often, but that the implications are not death to your family.
I’d be interested in how this documenting could be done. If you’re a manufacturer, you’d probably want to keep everything secret - except what’s needed for a patent for example - otherwise the competition might get an idea of the proprietary things you make in house.
I mean I’m all for it, I just don’t see it happening unless under very strict regulations.
I ve heard this a lot, how are modems black boxes?
No hardware documentation whatsoever. We don’t know what registers and instructions exist at the lowest levels.
As far as I am aware, there is no way to totally shut off and verify all cellular connections made, like to pass all traffic through a logged filter.
I call that a normal day at Google or Meta
At least you can choose not to use their services. Not much choosing going on in North Korea
At least you can choose not to use their services.
I guess a smart phone would be a luxury item in NK. So one could chose not to use one instead of being tracked?
In Germany the government and police use the word Quellentelekommunikationsüberwachung (telecommunication source surveillance) when they express their desire to have a Trojan on someone’s phone - to protect the children of course.
So the phenomenon is not unknown outside of NK.
Edit: fixed translation, thanks Muehe
use the word Quellentelekommunikationsüberwachung
Yeah, right, as if that can be used by humans, or if it’s even a word.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telekommunikationsüberwachung#Quellen-Telekommunikationsüberwachung
It means “telecommunication source surveillance”.
North korean are forced to use a smartphone?
The ones who have the ability to own such luxury might be. Sorta like how some jobs require it in other parts of the world.
After examining the phone, the BBC confirmed that the censorship mechanisms were deeply embedded in its software.
Remember, this could happen in your country.
Its always “It Can’t Happen Here” until it does.
What do you mean “could”? It does
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The irony of a comment about censorship being censored is really something.
Hm, only screenshots? By the way, this pales in comparison to what Google collects by default on every Android device. It’s really crazy. Have you seen the details of what they collect? Google literally logs every touch, along with the names of buttons and apps. You can turn this off in your Google account settings on Android, but most people don’t realize what’s being collected or how to turn it off.
Yes, Google’s code processes every touch, they wrote Android after all, so you are technically correct.
Is it all being sent somewhere from every Android device? Of course not, that’s ridiculous. Individual apps might have various levels of usage analytics though.
Of course not, that’s ridiculous.
angry Snowden noises
Storing individual button presses is ridiculous because that is much too low level when the apps also have much more high level information about your activities available. It is literally more useless than data you can acquire just as easily.
Yes, I’m sure he’s angry people are diluting the invigilation he exposed by coming up with fake ones all the time, and making people think it’s not worth fighting it anymore.
Do you have something constructive to say? Did you read an interesting article about a new type of tracking by a security researcher? Maybe you ran your own network capture and found something previously unknown? Great, let’s share that and learn how to block it.
Do you just wave your hands around and say that Google knows everything about you at all times using all Android devices, through unspecified means based on your gut feeling? Then that’s not constructive and is just spreading helplessness.
Oh Google logs and collect all taps on the screen? I’d love to know through which system service that happens, how the data leaves the device, to which servers is it going, which devices are affected by this, and how we can disable it. Oh you made it up and actually there are no details? Right.
Where can I disable this within my Google account I use on Android?
thats the same thing im asking!
So much whataboutism in the comments
Yep, confunding dictatorships with google, sweeping Kim’s regimes horrors under the mat.
It’s almost like yes we have problems in our democracies but being put in prison because you don’t want to starve to death isn’t really on the list for us.
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but being put in prison because you don’t want to starve to death
That is the main reason people are in prison in the West, you’re just privileged.
Oh yes the main reason people are in western prisons is because … They do not want to starve to death.
Are you an AI bot just reversing comments?
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Most crime in the West is driven by poverty, yes. So unless you’re saying that NK literally convicts people for the formal, on the books crime of “not wanting to starve”, then it’s the same principle.
But I assume you already know you’re wrong, based on the fact you’re bringing out the personal attacks
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It’s literally is
Depend of the country and or states. US have prison or starving on his list. Europe is a little better.
Lol wtf. Is the moon made of green cheese too?
Oppa gangnam style -> Comrade Gangnam style
Why doesn’t China, North Korea’s biggest trading partner, pressure them to be less authoritarian?
This isn’t really up to China, NK won’t listen because it’s not really up to them either. Most authoritarians would love to scale the repression down, but you can only do it while political and economic climate is right (without losing your power and your head)
If you signal to your citizens that they can speak more freely, the first thing out of their mouths will be Hey why did you do that fucked up thing?
Thus, you can “loosen the bolts” only when you are safe in your position of power and don’t mind a few concessions to the masses. “Yes we overstepped a few lines, but it was all the fault of this one bad man and also look at all this bread we have now!”
This is why authoritarian countries usually have “seasons”.
Yes, it’s also that authoritarian leaders grow plenty of friends and relatives who’d done really fucked up things. It’s not in their control to just do the oppression legally and possibly to explain (as in “it was such a time”, “those were imperfect measures and we’ve found a better way”), if they don’t do serial murder\rape and drugs trade and racket and theft, someone of their surroundings will.
That’s probably also why western political climates are slowly becoming more authoritarian - it’s the same mechanism, just much smaller and slower. Maybe it’s not drugs\murders\theft, but it’s gray legal area tax evasion, suppose. Then after a few years it’s something a bit worse, and so on, gradually.
Like it’s impossible to make an eternal engine, it’s impossible to make a political system without this.
They don’t want to be like the US
Pretty sure our phones do this everywhere.
I like to think that GrapheneOS doesn’t, but if it did I’m not sure I would have a way of finding out.
Graphene is open source. I hope someone who can read what computers digest as code can make sense of it and give it the gold star.
Did you also build it from source?
GrapheneOS has reproducible builds.
… How do you people think your stock mobile OS keyboard ‘learns’ how to better autocorrect to your manner of typing?
Do ya’ll think that data is not available, for sale, to any business or agency that will pay for it?
The one I use is FOSS software that largely just stores a dictionary of used words. FUTO Keyboard isn’t perfect, but it is decent.
If I read somewhere correctly, they’re also the first to open source their swipe dataset:
https://huggingface.co/datasets/futo-org/swipe.futo.orgYou can also contribute and help out with their dataset here:
https://swipe.futo.org/This is the way.
And monitored by AI.
Hence why I only use foss keebs (Futo), or run gboard with network perms disabled.
While the report did not specify the brand, the design and user interface closely resembled those of a Huawei or Honor device.
It’s unclear whether these companies officially sell phones in North Korea, but if they do, the devices are likely customized with state-approved software designed to restrict functionality and facilitate government surveillance.
I remember watching a series of Youtube videos by a guy working in the diplomatic department of a Southeast Asian country who I can’t name, and he took videos while on the sly, his camera (or phone) hidden carefully, showing some glimpses of life in Pyongyang. At one point he and his wife visited the government-run department store and, yeah, it’s pretty much a drab place to be there, you’ll be only buying necessities. However, there’s the special section where certain types of people such as high officials and foreigners are allowed to buy electronics, mostly with hard currency, and the merchandise included smartphones, all of them looked to be Chinese brands.
Sounds like Jaka Parker. Him and his wife are Indonesian diplomats. His videos weren’t really covert. He wore a very obvious bodycam most of the time. His videos are a bit dated now, but they’re still a fascinating glimpse into North Korea. Him and his family were often the only customers in a lot of the shops and restaurants he showed. Presumably they were meant for foreigners and/or elite North Koreans. He even has video of his wife giving birth at a maternity hospital.
Did they read 1984 and think, “This is a fantastic idea!”?
Looks around modern day
You uh…you think N Korea is the only ones?
They’re definitely among the worst.
The North Korean government’s totalitarianism predates Ninteen Eighty-Four. North Korea might have been an input for Nineteen Eighty-Four, mind…
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