North Korea Battles Rising Cell Phone Use

Cell phone use continues to grow in North Korea, despite the government’s best efforts to block it.

Handsets are used to make appointments and payments and to trade goods. Even South Korean pastors are using cell phones to give sermons to people in North Korea.

If cell phones connected to the North are linked to the South via the Internet, this provides valuable information unobtainable through traditional media. Competition for breaking news is expected among South Korean civic groups related to North Korea. [Donga Ilbo]

North Korea can’t find the money to feed its people, but it can find the money to buy cell phone jamming and detection equipment. It can also find willing sellers:

Pyongyang seems well aware of the negative impact it could suffer from cell phones and communication by North Koreans with people in South Korea. To curb this, North Korea several years ago purchased dozens of radio wave-detecting vehicles for one million dollars each from Germany and handheld devices from China.

Therefore, calling someone in North Korea for more than one minute is risky. To circumvent government control, North Koreans repeatedly turn their cell phones on and off and call on mountains, where the surveillance vehicles cannot go. Long calls are available in rural areas, however.

We sanction companies for money laundering, supporting terrorism, and proliferating WMD technologies to rogue regimes. We should also have a means to sanction companies that sell technologies to regimes that enable repression or censorship.