A Visual Look at Smartphone Penetration in North Korea

How many North Koreans are using smartphones? It’s one of the most common questions about technology in North Korea, but it’s also one that is very difficult to answer.

It used to be straightforward. After Egypt’s Orascom launched Koryolink, North Korea’s first 3G network in December 2008, it would publish detailed quarterly statistics. The data, which included measurements like the average revenue per subscriber, must surely have irked the normally secretive North Korean government.

But the release of that data stopped in 2011 when Orascom reshuffled its corporate structure. After that, the company announced a couple of subscriber milestones but has otherwise been silent. The arrival of a competing state-owned carrier in 2013, Kangsong, also muddied the waters and has never announced subscriber data.

In 2022, as part of a look at cellular telephony in North Korea, 38 North estimated the country had around 6.5 million and 7 million subscriber lines. That was based on estimates of subscriber growth and wasn’t tied to any announced figures, however, it was pretty close to the truth.

The latest data on North Korea from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), sourced from the North Korean government, shows the country had 6.35 million mobile phone subscriptions at the end of 2022. More recent data has not been published.

Since 2022, there has been significant growth in the number of companies selling smartphones in North Korea and a jump in the number of apps and the deployment of e-payment services, all of which would be expected to increase market penetration.

We’ll be publishing new estimates for subscriber growth soon, but some images from state media provide a visual illustration of how common smartphones appear to be in Pyongyang.

At the recent mass gymnastics event in Pyongyang to mark the 80^th founding anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, spectators used the flashlight function on their phones during the performance, and the number of phones in the crowd was larger than evident. It also provided a visual demonstration of the prevalence of smartphones in North Korea.

The number of people with phones will be greater than it appears because, as the following image illustrates, not everyone is using their phones with the flashlight turned on.