Smuggled Smartphone From North Korea Uncovers Chilling Ways Kim Jong Un’s Regime Maintains Control

A smartphone secretly brought out of North Korea has opened a rare window into just how strict the country’s censorship is.

Under the control of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, North Korea is run by the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), which has held power since the party was established in 1948.

Since then, the country has become known for being one of the hardest places in the world to enter. People who have managed to escape have shared stories that offer a glimpse of what life inside the country is truly like.

BBC News took a deeper look at how the North Korean government enforces censorship by analyzing a smartphone that was illegally taken out of the country in the past year.

At first, the phone might look just like any other smartphone you’d find in places like the US. But once you start digging into how it works, some alarming differences come to light.

The investigation revealed that the phone would automatically take a screenshot every five minutes. These images were hidden away in a folder the user couldn’t access, but authorities could—an unsettling feature meant for close monitoring.

Even certain words are not allowed on the device. BBC journalist Jean Mackenzie demonstrated this by typing the word ‘oppa’ into the phone.

While ‘oppa’ literally means older brother in Korean, it’s also often used in South Korea as a term of endearment for a boyfriend.

But as soon as she entered the word, the phone instantly replaced it with ‘comrade’. That says a lot about the state’s view on language. It seems the only acceptable use of that word is to refer to a biological sibling.

If you try to type ‘South Korea’ into the phone, BBC’s investigation found that it would be auto-corrected to ‘puppet state’. According to Mackenzie, that’s the term North Korea routinely uses for the South.

South Korea has long tried to sneak its pop culture into the North, using creative ways to get around the tight restrictions. For instance, USB sticks loaded with K-dramas and K-pop music have been floated across rivers in plastic bottles.

The government’s clampdown on foreign content is harsh. Last year, reports came out that as many as 30 teenagers were executed for watching South Korean television dramas. The level of control is deeply disturbing.