What's a North Korean mobile phone really like?

11 minutes ago

4 min read

On Tuesday we took you inside the murky world of North Korean operatives secreting workers into western tech firms. Today NerdNews shines a light on what the world’s most ubiquitous device, the mobile phone, looks like in The Hermit Kingdom.

(First published on my Substack where you can get #NerdNews, marvellous maths and general geekery.)

('Ring ring': created by the author using Dall-E)

Pyongyang in your pocket.

What's Snapchat like in North Korea? Spoiler alert, not great. But three handsets, one of them smuggled out by defector networks, plus some terrific Washington Post reporting, have given us a look at what being connected means in the world's least connected country.

The Washington Post, working with North Korea technology specialist Martyn Williams, (who writes at nktechlab.substack.com ) has gained access to two of the country's latest handsets. Full credit to Michelle Ye Hee Lee and the Post team, because this is a genuinely rare glimpse of daily life inside the DPRK.

What emerges is a subtle dance. The elite of Pyongyang being given access to digital technology to insulate them from the harsh realities of life outside of the capital, while at the same time letting Supreme Leader Kim keep an eye on people’s financial and business activities.

Here is what a mobile phone is for in a country the internet does not reach.

Kim Jong un-boxing.

It’s a fair question: in a country where people cannot access the internet, why would there be a market for smartphones?

Well the International Telecommunication Union counted 6.35 million mobile subscriptions in North Korea in 2024, of which 5.79 million were mobile broadband. Something like one phone for every four people.

The bulk of the at least 24 domestic handset brands, are rebadged Chinese models. Almost all of them are Chinese-made phones rebadged locally and loaded with a state-built version of Android.

A top of the line, total baller phone will set you back around US$750 – which you could argue is equivalent to about $56,000 for an average Aussie. There are cheaper models and a busy second-hand market. But the Australian experience of every schoolkid in every town having a smartphone … yeah … nah.

But as Lee argues, for those that do use them, it is a handy conduit for prying state eyes to look into private and business banking activity.

"North Korea is very serious about controlling information internally, and this is just another way to do it." — Martyn Williams, Fortune.

Appy days.

Some of the app offerings will sound familiar. You can order food, ride the metro and withdraw ATM-cash via an e-wallet. Enterprising street vendors even use QR codes.

And yes if you book a cab at peak time, there will be a price surge.

Ladies: get skincare advice, make-up tutorials and track your period on “A Woman’s Age” – an app that opens with a personal message from Kim Jong Il himself (notwithstanding he’s been dead since 2011!)

Though I would get a second opinion before following the advice that if you have different sized breasts, massage the smaller one for 15 minutes a day.

And how better to relax at the end of a long day servicing the fatherland than on Manbang, a 24-hour streaming service that, to be completely honest, probably features a little bit too much state media and old Eastern Bloc cinema for my liking, but who am I to play film critic?

The intranet of things.

But isn’t this the most heavily censored country on earth?

Yep.

You see none of this involves the internet. Pyongyang phones engage the walled off national INTRA-net, Kwangmyong and that’s it.

Anyone chasing the real internet buys a black-market SIM and hunts for a Chinese tower near the border, which drops them straight into China's surveillance net instead.

And be very careful doing this. Don’t forget, distributing smuggled South Korean movies can get you executed!

"I thought other countries lived with this control" — Kang Gyuri, North Korean defector, BBC 2025.

It was smuggled South Korean dramas and foreign media that convinced Kang to defect.

Oppa-tunity knocks.

A state-run intranet allows Kim and co to call the shots.

Type “oppa” South Korean slang for a boyfriend, into a smuggled North Korean phone and the keyboard autocorrects to “dongji” or comrade.

Type "South Korea" and, surprise, surprise you get "puppet state". Unlike the phone you may well be reading this on, DPRK autocorrects cannot be overridden.

Screenshot in the dark.

And if you think your phone is spying on you, get this. The handset smuggled out to the BBC automatically took a screenshot every five minutes, saving them to a folder the user cannot open but the authorities can. Handy for enforcing laws like the one against speaking in a South Korean accent.

"Smartphones are now part and parcel of the way North Korea tries to indoctrinate people." — Martyn Williams, BBC May 2025.

Ring of truth.

So (some) North Koreans can enjoy the 21st century joys of mobile banking, ubering taxis, streaming, even period tracking.

But don’t expect to see any North Korean TikTok influencers any time soon.

And anyone inside North Korea looking to shake things up, be very careful. Kim and co are probably watching.