North Korean Phone Appears to Monitor User's Activity

A smartphone smuggled out of North Korea has given a glimpse of the extraordinary measures the notorious regime takes to monitor its citizens, according to a new report.

The report by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) showed that the phone can change certain words that users type, but more disturbing – although not surprising given the country’s extraordinarily repressive government – is that the phone secretly takes screenshots every five minutes for government surveillance.

The phone shown in the BBC video appeared to have state-approved software designed to restrict its functions but also facilitate government monitoring of the user.

If you type in certain South Korean words, such as “oppa” which refers to an older brother or boyfriend, the phone changes it to “comrade.” Or “South Korea” becomes “puppet state.”

But the more troubling feature was the phone “silently captured a screenshot every five minutes, storing the images in a hidden folder that users could not access,” according to a report on the phone by Techspot.

Images kept in a secret file on the North Korean phone (BBC pic).

The BBC said authorities could review the images to monitor what the user had been doing. It said the handset was smuggled out of North Korea by a media outlet in Seoul named Daily NK, which specializes on North Korean affairs.

Techspot noted that smartphone usage has grown in North Korea in recent years, but mobile phones cannot connect to the internet the way people do in most of the world.

It also reportedly has “youth crackdown squads” to check young people’s phones and whether they use expressions that are popular in the South.