“Compromising Connectivity: Information Dynamics between the State and Society in a Digitizing North Korea”, 2017-02-01 (; similar):
In 2012, “A Quiet Opening: North Koreans in a Changing Media Environment” described the effects of the steady dissolution of North Korea’s information blockade. Precipitated by the collapse of the state economy during the famine of the 1990s, North Korea’s once strict external and internal controls on the flow of information atrophied as North Korean citizens traded with one another, and goods and people flowed across the border with China. Activities unthinkable in Kim Il Sung’s day became normalized, even if many remained technically illegal. A decade into the 21st century, North Korea was no longer perfectly sealed off from the outside world and its citizens were much more connected to each other. Continued research suggests that many of the trends toward greater information access and sharing detailed in “A Quiet Opening” persist today. Yet, over the last four years, since Kim Jong Un’s emergence as leader, the picture has become more complicated.
It is tempting to view the dynamics surrounding media access and information flow in North Korea as a simple tug-of-war: North Korean citizens gain greater access to a broader range of media and communication devices, and unsanctioned content. The North Korean government, realizing this, responds through crackdowns in an attempt to reconstitute its blockade on foreign information and limit the types of media and communication devices its citizens can access. However, the reality is not so neatly binary. As the North Korean economic situation rebounded after the famine and achieved relative stability, 2 authorities developed strategies to establish new, more modern forms of control within an environment that was fundamentally altered from its pre-famine state.
Among the most important trends to emerge in the North Korean information environment under Kim Jong Un is the shift toward greater media digitization and the expansion of networked communications. The state has ceded and now sanctioned a considerably greater level of interconnectedness between private North Korean citizens. This, at least in part, may be an acknowledgement the market economy in North Korea is here to stay, and thus the communications channels that enable the processes of a market economy must be co-opted and supported rather than rolled back.3 Although the government continues to make efforts to monitor communications and dictate what subjects are off-limits, it is allowing average citizens far greater access to communications technologies. Greater digitization and digital network access are already having profound effects on the basic dynamics and capabilities that define the information space in North Korea.
The expansion and catalyzation of person-to-person communication through mobile phones and other networked digital technologies is in many ways a promising development. However, as this report will document, from both a user and technical perspective, expanding network connectivity to a broad swath of the population is arming the North Korean government with a new array of censorship and surveillance tools that go beyond what is observed even in other authoritarian states or closed media environments. It is clear that the state’s information control strategy, while changing, is not ad hoc or ill-considered. Recent technological innovations and policy changes, on balance, may be giving the North Korean government more control than they are ceding.
…Data Sources: This study primarily draws from:
The 2015 Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) Survey of North Korea Refugees, Defectors and Travelers (n = 350)
A qualitative study comprised of 34 interviews with specifically recruited recent defectors conducted in May and June of 2016 specifically for this report
Technical analyses of available North Korean software and hardware
[The details on NK use of digital censorship is interesting: steady progress in locking down Bluetooth and WiFi by software and then hardware modifications; use of Android security system/DRM to install audit logs + regular screenshots to capture foreign media consumption; a whitelist/signed-media system to block said foreign media from ever being viewed, with auto-deletion of offending files; watermarking (courtesy of an American university’s misguided outreach) of media created on desktops to trace them; network blocking and surveillance; and efforts towards automatic bulk surveillance of text messages for ‘South-Korean-style’ phrases/words. Stallman’s warnings about DRM are quite prophetic in the NK context—the system is secured against the user…For these reasons & poverty, radio (including foreign radios like Voice of America) is—surprisingly to me—the top source of information for North Koreans.]