Smuggled North Korean phone exposes four chilling differences to devices in rest of the world

The BBC recently got its hands on one of North Korea’s smartphones after the dictator-run country cracked down on South Korean content undermining Kim Jong Un’s grip. According to the publication, South Korea has been attempting to fight back against the dictatorship by smuggling “films, TV dramas, pop songs and news across the border to challenge the country’s propaganda.” North Korea, already infamous for its strict policies and totalitarian regime, has reportedly cracked down harder on its population as a result, sparking huge changes to smartphones which heavily monitor what people are using them for.

In 2024, the BBC managed to get its hands on one such smartphone to show that North Korea’s ban on external influence is only the tip of the iceberg.

The phones don’t have access to the internet

It’s a well-known fact that people in North Korea don’t have access to the same content that much of the Western world takes for granted. There’s no social media, no reality TV drama, and anything you watch on TV has been designed, packaged, and distributed by the state. The smartphone smuggled out of North Korea showed as much, with no internet connection and no access to streaming sites such as Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+.

There’s an auto-correct feature on North Korea’s smartphones

Here’s where things get really creepy, because Kim Jong Un has blocked certain South Korean words and phrases from smartphones in the North. For instance, Seoul correspondent Jean Mackenzie wrote “Oppa”, which means “Older brother” in Korean, but “boyfriend” in South Korean slang. After typing the word out, the phone autocorrected it to “Comrade.”

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When typing in the word for South Korea, “Namhan”, the North Korean smartphone autocorrected it to “Puppet State”, a piece of propaganda peddled by the regime that claims South Korea is a vassal state of the US.

Presumably, there are other words and phrases which are automatically changed when written.

Credit: BBC

People then get a chilling warning on their device

When typing a banned word or phrase, the North Korean smartphone flags a pop-up that warns the user to stay clear. In the case of “Oppa”, Jean Mackenzie was told to only use it when referring to an older brother.

The phone takes screenshots every five minutes

Credit: BBC

Perhaps most concerningly, the North Korean smartphone also takes screenshots of the device every five minutes. These screenshots are then stored in a dedicated app, which users can see but NOT interact with. Only the government can access the folder, which essentially keeps a paper trail of every single thing the user is doing on there.

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Featured image credit: BBC/KCNA/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock