Author: Martyn Williams

  • North Korea serves up two new websites

    North Korea serves up two new websites

    Two new North Korean-related websites have recently launched and both are associated with food. The first, from Korea Pyongyang Haedanghwa Foodstuff, appears as a sub-site on the Naenara portal operated by Korea Computer Center (pictured, right). The site is available in Korean, Chinese and English and promotes the company’s South Korea’s Yonhap News reports the website is “what…

  • Japan ties exported PCs to Internet attacks

    Japan ties exported PCs to Internet attacks

    Japanese police suspect a consignment of 1,843 used computers and monitors allegedly exported to North Korea could have been used in a 2009 week-long attack on a handful of South Korean and U.S. websites. The computers, allegedly exported in violation of Japanese sanctions, were shipped to the Pyongyang Informatics Center (PIC), a unit of the state-run…

  • KCTV adds computer-generated backdrop to evening news

    KCTV adds computer-generated backdrop to evening news

    North Korea’s state broadcaster, Korea Central Television, has given its evening news a new look. The changes are small, but represent a leap forward in presentation style for the staid broadcaster. The new look has news readers presenting items in front of a computer-generated background. A graphic to accompany the story appears above the right…

  • DPRK again named “Enemy of Internet”

    North Korea remains high on the list of enemies of the Internet, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said Monday in an annual report on Internet censorship. The country was listed alongside Bahrain, Belarus Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam as a home to the world’s most repressive online regimes. The news…

  • More Tokyo raids over DPRK PC exports

    Police in Tokyo conducted follow-up raids this week on the office of a North Korean-linked science association as part of an investigation into illegal PC exports. The Korean Association of Science and Technology in Japan (????????????, ????????????) was raided on Tuesday, according to local media reports. Police were investigating a possible link between the group and Lee Soon…

  • DPRK radio disappears

    DPRK radio disappears

    Several of North Korea’s external radio services and its powerful jamming operation that blocks foreign broadcasts are having trouble staying on the air. Voice of Korea, the country’s international radio outlet, was missing from several of its scheduled broadcasts on Thursday, according to monitoring from sites in South Korea, Japan and the U.S. Two days…

  • North Korea cell phone ban report incorrect, says Orascom

    North Korea cell phone ban report incorrect, says Orascom

    North Koreans have not been banned from using mobile phones during a mourning period for Kim Jong Il despite a press report to the contrary, according to the majority owner of North Korea’s nationwide cellular network. The U.K.’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on January 26th that the North Korean government had warned citizens they would be “branded as ‘war…

  • Is Rodong Sinmun using South Korean news photos without permission?

    Regular readers of The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea’s Workers’ Party, might be forgiven for thinking the newspaper has a correspondent in South Korea. The newspaper, now available in English via its website, offers a page of inter-Korean news complete with photographs of demonstrations happening in Seoul. But where are they coming…

  • Pyongyang satellite monitoring station

    In the northern Pyongyang suburb of Hyongjesan there are twelve large satellite dishes on a hillside. The dishes, easily visible in satellite photos, have been there for at least a decade and while their function is unknown, their close proximity to North Korea’s signals intelligence headquarters might be a clue to their purpose. Some of the dishes have…

  • North Korea meets Internet rumors

    North Korea meets Internet rumors

    A rumor that Kim Jong Un had been assassinated in Beijing, that apparently began on Chinese micro-blogging sites, went global through Twitter.