North Korea

[KimJongUn]

When he first visited in 2008, almost no foreigners visited the country.

Now, he says North Koreans are far more used to seeing people from all over the world.
These women are Koreans that grew up and live in Japan. They were touring the country at the same time as Lafforgue.

Many North Koreans now have goods from China, like computers, DVD players, and clothes.
Despite the backpack one was wearing, Lafforgue says the children he spoke to didn’t understand who Mickey Mouse was.


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[KimJongUn]

Lafforgue says that he was able to have candid conversations with many North Koreans,
so long as he stayed away from politics. Many loved to talk about sports teams.

One of the main tourist attractions in Pyongyang is the War Museum,
which depicts the Korean War as the North Korean’s victorious struggle over the American imperialists.

Portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il are everywhere in the country, overlooking the people.
It’s so prominent that Lafforgue did an entire series on just the “Great Leaders’” portraits.


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[KimJongUn]

Every year, the Pyongyang Floral Festival celebrates the birthday of Kim Jung Il.
At the entrance to the Floral exhibition, North Koreans take portraits in front of their leaders.

There are many “fun fairs” in Pyongyang and other cities now.
The fun fairs are amusement parks with many rides for North Koreans to go on and games to play.

This scene of emotion between two lovers is very rare in North Korea.
Most of the time, women and men do not congregate in public together.


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[KimJongUn]

Lafforgue says there are many twins and triplets without parents, like these triplets singing at an orphanage.
The official reason is that parents cannot afford to raise 2 or 3 kids at the same time.

A teacher instructs children at Kim Jong Suk school in Pyongyang, while a child attempts to guess the name of each animal. Other children are forbidden to help.

North Korean men must stay in the army for at least six years, during which they have minimal communications with their families.


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[KimJongUn]

On special occasions, North Koreans carry a special type of plastic flower called a kimjonglia.

A soldier stands in front of the Ryugyong Hotel. It has been in construction since 1987 and has yet to open.
Egypt-based Orascom has agreed to help finish the tower in exchange for rights to providing mobile phone service in North Korea.

Many North Koreans now have mobile phones. Orascom says their service covers 75% of North Korea’s population.
Still, mobile phones can only call inside the country and no foreign phones are allowed in.


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[KimJongUn]

Lafforgue says that many rural North Koreans are more distrustful of foreigners, because they are less educated. This woman was friendly, however.

Lafforgue once stayed with North Koreans on the Chilbo Sea. He says that the North Koreans’ houses in the beach village were nice,
because they host tourists, but there was a very poor village within walking distance.

This North Korean couple is one of the families that hosted Lafforgue and the other tourists at the beach village.


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[KimJongUn]

The chief of the Chilbo Sea beach village showed Lafforgue a picture of his son,
who he says will stay in the North Korean army “until the reunification of Korea.”

Here, North Koreans read the news while waiting in the the Puhung subway station. Puhung means rehabilitation.
All 17 subway stations in Pyongyang have names like Rehabilitation, Triumphant Return, Paradise, and Glory.

Pyongyang may be where privilege North Koreans live…


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[KimJongUn]

But that doesn’t mean its all up to date. Many buildings are old with no heat or running water.

Lafforgue often requested to see distant sights in North Korea, because he says that the most unfiltered view of North Korea can be seen while on the road.

On Lafforgues’ sixth trip, he was finally able to visit Chongjin in the North, where he saw many instances of extreme poverty.
The guides took his and other tourists’ cameras during that part of the trip.


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[KimJongUn]

Lafforgue was outright stopped from taking a picture only twice.
He says if you act like a tourist would in any other country, it is unlikely that officials will bother you.

Lafforgue says that he loved photographing North Korea because he wanted to capture real emotion among the people. “They’re not robots,” he says.


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[KimJongUn]

We Spoke To A North Korean Defector Who Trained With Its Hackers — What He Said Is Pretty Scary

Eugene Kim
Dec. 24, 2014, 7:27 PM

Whether North Korea was responsible for the Sony hack or not, the consensus is that North Korea has some of the best hackers in the world.

There have been some reports recently about North Korea’s special cyber warfare unit, known as Bureau 121. The North Korean government has made grooming its “cyber warriors” a top priority for decades, and has given first class treatment to its hackers.

Jang Se-yul, a North Korean defector who now leads an organization called North Korea People’s Liberation Front in Seoul, could have been one of them.

Before defecting to South Korea in 2007, Jang went to Mirim University, the country’s top engineering college, which is now called the University of Automation. Although he wasn’t a hacker — his major was War Game Strategy, focused on cyber warfare simulations — Jang took classes with the hackers that are now in Bureau 121. After graduation, Jang worked at North Korea’s General Bureau of Reconnaissance, the intelligence agency that Bureau 121 is a part of. He says he still keeps in touch with some of those hackers.

Business Insider had a chance to speak with Jang and hear more about the inner workings of North Korea’s elite hacking force. Here’s what he told us:

How they’re trained: Mirim University produces most of the hackers that get placed in Bureau 121. It’s a highly competitive program, with each class accepting only about 100 students out of 5,000 applicants. They take six 90-minute classes every day, learning different coding languages and operating systems, from C to Linux. Jang says a lot of time was spent dissecting Microsoft programs, like the Windows operating system, and how to attack the overall computer IT systems of enemy countries like the US or South Korea.

But the core principle is to develop its own hacking programs and computer viruses without having to rely on programs already built in the outside world. Jang says he believes North Korean hackers are as good as the top programmers at Google or CIA, if not already better. “Especially in terms of coding, I’m confident they’re better because they’ve invested in it for so long,” he says.

What it’s like to work for Bureau 121: They’re all very sophisticated professional hackers, with almost nine years of intense training by the time they get hired. They’re split into different focus groups based on countries to attack, like the US, South Korea, and Japan. Once they’re placed in their respective groups, they spend nearly two years traveling to their assigned country, learning the language and culture. The ability to travel outside of North Korea and make US dollars is part of the reason so many North Koreans want this job. Jang estimates there are about 1,800 cyber warriors in Bureau 121.

Their living conditions are much better than most North Koreans': they receive high salaries, a free apartment over 2,000 sq ft in downtown Pyongyang, and their family can move to Pyongyang as well, which is a big privilege. They’re among the top 1% who are happy with their lives in North Korea. In fact, with free access to the internet, these hackers are all aware of what’s going on in the outside world and how reclusive their country is — but they still won’t leave their country. “No matter how hard you try to convince them, they won’t leave — even if you offered them a job at the Blue House (the official residence of the South Korean president),” Jang says.

Kim Jong Un computer hacking KCNA

The ultimate goal: North Korea realizes they have no chance fighting their enemies in conventional warfare. But in cyber space, they can create chaos with relatively few resources. It’s why the North Korean government has spent so much effort in this area since the 1980s. They call it the “Secret War.” Jang says the ultimate goal is to attack the central IT infrastructure of enemy countries, primarily the government, and steal as much information as possible while also causing social pandemonium.

According to Jang, the North Korean hackers say attacking South Korean government servers is like “swimming while touching the ground.” Although he wouldn’t be able to say for sure how advanced their skills are, Jang says the hackers could probably “easily” crack into company servers, too.

He also said he’s “absolutely sure” North Korea is behind the Sony hacks. The fact that people are still skeptical of North Korea’s involvement is the very reason North Korea is so focused on cyber attacks: they can cause massive confusion without being definitively fingered.

The bigger problem is this is only going to get worse. “The US is definitely not in a safety zone. North Korea’s prepared for this for over 20 years. The U.S. shouldn’t take them lightly,” he said.

 

[KimJongUn]

Here's A Reminder Of Who Has Internet Access In North Korea

Michael B Kelley
Dec. 23, 2014, 12:39 PM

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sitting in front of some very outdated equipment.

Yesterday, North Korea's four internet networks went offline for nine hours.

Reuters explained whom the outage affected:

"Current and former U.S. law enforcement and security officials said only a tiny number of people in North Korea's leadership have access to the Internet, and that almost all its Internet links and traffic pass through China."

Dyn Research notes that "North Korea has significantly less Internet to lose, compared to other countries with similar populations: Yemen (47 networks), Afghanistan (370 networks), or Taiwan (5,030 networks)."

It's unclear who or what caused the outage. Dyn, which first noticed the irregularities, says that the incident "seems consistent with a fragile network under external attack" as well as "more common causes, such as power problems."

Matthew Prince, CEO of US-based CloudFlare, told Reuters that it wouldn't be that hard to overload North Korea's fragile network with a basic distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. He added that North Korea's internet is now restored, which "is pretty good evidence that the outage wasn't caused by a state-sponsored attack, otherwise it'd likely still be down for the count."

Alternatively, a cyberattack leading to a temporary outage could be a message to North Korea's leadership (and perhaps its benefactors in Beijing).

Shutting down North Korea's internet for a day strikes me as a measured & appropriate first response to Sony hack.
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) December 23, 2014

If North Korea suffered from some kind of cyberattack, it's likely related to the Sony hack. A hacker group named Guardians of Peace took over the computer network of Sony Pictures, forcing it to cancel the release of the movie "The Interview."

The US government has formally blamed North Korea. Pyongyang has praised the hack but denies involvement.

In any case, for some perspective on North Korea's connectivity on a good day, here's a look at North Korea at night in 2013:

 

[KimJongUn]

Look At How Bizarre North Korea's 'Internet' Is

Associated Press
TONG-HYUNG KIM and Youkyung Lee, Associated Press
Dec. 23, 2014, 10:41 AM

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — An hours-long Internet outage Tuesday in one of the world's least-wired countries was probably more inconvenient to foreigners than to North Korean residents, most of whom have never gone online. Even for wired Koreans south of the heavily armed border separating the rivals, the temporary outage made little difference — southerners are banned by law from accessing North Korean websites.

While North Korea tightly controls its citizens' activities, especially their access to information on the outside world, it does have a cyberspace. Here's a look at North Korea's unique broadband and mobile Internet, the country's use of email and its tightly controlled use of a domestic Intranet.

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INTERNET VS INTRANET

Only a very small number of people among North Korea's elite use the Internet, as the rest of the world knows it. A slightly larger group of privileged North Koreans can see a tightly controlled Intranet called "Kwangmyong," meaning "Bright."

On this self-contained, authoritarian alternative to the World Wide Web, chats and emails are monitored and content comes pre-filtered by the state.

The Intranet provides a connection between industry, universities and government. Its role seems to be to spread information, rather than for commerce, entertainment or communication, Will Scott, a computer science instructor at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, told the AP in February.

It is unclear how many Internet-connected devices are used in North Korea. But it's likely that the number of Internet users is small considering that the country has only 1,024 Internet Protocol addresses for a population of 25 million, according to So Young Seo, a researcher at South Korea's state-run Korea Information Society Development Institute.

North Korea's small circle of Internet users consist of elites in the government and military, propagandists and media workers, state-trained hackers and researchers at education institutes such as Kim Il Sung University and the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, Seo said.

Other North Koreans are limited to the intranet, which provides access to state media and a limited number of information sources that were pulled and censored from the real Internet.

Most common North Koreans probably don't actively use Kwangmyong because owning a computer requires permission from government authorities and would cost as much as three months' salary for the average worker, Seo said.

It's unclear what was behind the temporary shutdown of key North Korean websites. The shutdown followed a U.S. vow to respond to a crippling cyberattack on Sony Pictures that Washington blames on Pyongyang. The White House and the State Department declined to say whether the U.S. government was responsible.

A cyberattack on North Korea would be an exercise in futility if the purpose was to cause a serious disruption, said Chang Yong Seok, a North Korea expert at Seoul National University.

"Even if their Internet is shut down, the inconvenience will be shared only by members of the power elite," Chang said. "It would be an entirely different matter if hackers manage to penetrate the Kwangmyong network, but that has never happened before."

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A world map, with the Korea peninsula marked in red, is seen as a hotel receptionist talks on the phone in Rason city, northeast of Pyongyang, August 29, 2011.

MOBILE PHONES

Cell phone use in North Korea is also controlled by the government. While mobile phones are now a popular gateway to the Internet in the South, for North Koreans cell phones are used for domestic calls. They can't access the Internet or make overseas calls.

Cellular service is provided by Koryolink, a joint venture between North Korea's Korea Post & Telecommunications Corporation and Egypt's Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding SAE.

More than 2 million cellphones are used in North Korea, according to the International Telecommunication Union. But the number of mobile users is believed to be significantly smaller, Seo said, because elite North Koreans often use more than one device because it's cheaper to buy a new phone than buy additional minutes on the same handset.

In 2013, North Korea began to allow foreigners to access the Internet through the 3G networks. They could upload posts or photos on Twitter and Instagram from North Korea. Starting last year, North Korea began selling monthly mobile Internet data plans to foreigners for use with a USB modem or on mobile devices using their SIM cards.

Orascom built a 3G network more than five years ago. The network now covers most major cities.

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People attend a mass rally against "U.S. Imperialists" at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang June 25, 2014.

PROPAGANDA USE AND PAST ATTACKS

North Korea's use of the Internet targets outsiders more than residents, who still mostly rely on traditional outlets for information and entertainment.

Various North Korean government bodies have launched websites as well as English-language Facebook pages, YouTube channels and Twitter accounts to spread propaganda aimed at international audiences. The North uses social media to praise its system and leaders, and to repeat commentaries sent out by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.

In 2013, some of these social media accounts run by North Korea were hacked by those who purported to be part of the hacker activist group Anonymous. Hackers left a message on Twitter and posted a picture of the North Korean leader's face with a pig-like snout and a drawing of Mickey Mouse on his chest.

In another attack, Pyongyang saw intermittent Internet access for two days in March 2013. North Korea blamed the shutdown on the United States and South Korea, accusing the allies of "intensive and persistent virus attacks."

South Korea denied the allegation and the U.S. military declined to comment.

 

[KimJongUn]

11 Mindblowing Facts About North Korea


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[KimJongUn]

The 35 Most Powerful Militaries In The World

http://www.businessinsider.sg/35-most-powerful-militaries-in-the-world-2014-7/#.VJ7REv-fAA


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[Revenge]

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[KimJongUn]

Geoffrey Cain
December 26, 2014 00:15

Political kidnappings, North Korean style

The regime has abducted dozens, possibly hundreds, of foreigners. Here are some of their tales.

Sakie Yokota, mother of Megumi Yokota, who was abducted to North Korean in 1977, shows a portrait of her daughter which was brought back by Japanese delegates from North Korea at a press conference in Tokyo 16 November 2004. North Korean agents allegedly attempted to kidnap a foreign student this fall in France. ( /AFP/Getty Images)

SEOUL, South Korea — It’s difficult to imagine that kidnappers could get away with abducting a privileged foreign student from a French university and spiriting him thousands of miles away to his home country via a flight departing from a public airport.

But that’s precisely what North Korean operatives are accused of attempting this fall.

Even more astonishingly, the move was essentially standard operating procedure for the despotic country’s spy masters.

The young man in France, whose surname is Han, is the son of a high-level official who fell out of favor with Kim Jong Un’s regime, and was reportedly executed earlier this year. The son first went missing from his architecture school, Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Architecture de Paris-La Villette, in October. Two weeks later, in early November, he appeared with his kidnappers at Charles De Gaulle airport. There, he made a bold escape, fleeing in a last-ditch attempt to save himself from imprisonment — or worse.

He’s now in hiding, possibly with the help of the French government. The story didn’t break until late November, first getting out through the South Korean press.

“This is a young guy who is the son of an important man in the North Korean regime,” a French official told TIME, who asked not to be named because she was not authorized to speak about the case. “His dad was executed a few months ago so that is why, I suppose, he was targeted.”

The French embassy in Seoul could not be reached for comment.

The news comes almost a year after Kim Jong Un’s nephew, Kim Han Sol, also went into hiding in France, rattled by the purge of the Supreme Leader’s uncle, Jang Song Taek. His side of the family — reviled and pretty much excommunicated from North Korea — could easily have been targeted as well.

While these kidnappings are not exactly numerous, no one, at least in previous decades, had been entirely safe from them. The regime’s history of abductions on foreign soil have targeted North Koreans in exile as well as complete innocents who have nothing to do with the regime.

That said, North Korean kidnappings on foreign soil were pretty much a Cold War tactic. In the 1970s and 1980s, dozens (and possibly hundreds) of Japanese, Europeans and Southeast Asians were believed to be abducted from their own soil, forced to train spies in their native tongues and customs; many are still unaccounted for. A few were even married off to American military deserters.

Overseas North Koreans like Han, on the other hand, would likely be treated as ideological enemies preparing to stand trial, rather than non-Koreans kidnapped for a special purpose.

The kidnapping racket, although no longer a big part of North Korea’s clandestine operations, didn’t fully come to light until the past decade, following decades of denials by the government and its far-left sympathizers around the world.

Here are a few of the most egregious cases:

The Japanese wife of an American deserter

In 1965, Charles Robert Jenkins, a National Guard patrolman stationed in South Korea, dropped his equipment and ran across the heavily mined demilitarized zone, surrendering to North Korean forces. At least, that’s how he recounted it in his 2005 memoir "The Reluctant Communist."

Jenkins, who didn’t want to serve in Vietnam, hoped that he’d be sent back to Washington via a prisoner exchange with the Soviet Union. Instead, the regime seized on his propaganda value, keeping him in Pyongyang and later casting him as the villain in anti-American films. He stayed in North Korea for most of his life.

More than a decade later, the unlikely celebrity was offered a wife by a regime that wanted to keep him happy. She was Hitomi Soga, who like at least 13 of her Japanese compatriots, was snatched from her own soil.

In 1978, accompanying her mother home after ice cream, on an island off the country’s west coast, North Korean agents nabbed Soga, then a nursing student, and carried her away in body bag and onto a skiff hidden beneath a bridge. Soga’s mother also disappeared, presumably kidnapped, but was never heard from again.

Soga spent the next two decades teaching North Korean spies how to act and speak like the Japanese.

In what led to a diplomatic incident in 2002, she and four other abductees were briefly allowed to go home to Japan, but all defied the regime’s orders to return to North Korea. It was only a few years later that Jenkins and their two daughters were permitted to depart Pyongyang, emotionally reuniting with Soga. The American deserter then surrendered at a US military base in Japan, only to face a surprisingly light court martial.

The family continues to live in Japan, and has called on North Korea to reveal the whereabouts of Soga’s mother.

Suspected: the Romanian wife of another American deserter

In 1978, a Romanian art student in Italy, Doina Bumbea, vanished after being approached by a man who promised to fix her up with an exhibition space in either Hong Kong or Japan, depending on whose account you believe.

Nobody had an inkling of her whereabouts until Jenkins released his 2005 autobiography. He alleged that the ex-wife of fellow defector James Dresnok — an American deserter who still lives in Pyongyang — was actually a troubled and heavy-drinking abductee from Romania. Her name? Dona — eerily similar to “Doina.”

There were other parallels, too, although skeptics questioned the tale’s weirdness and lack of sourcing. With no passport to visit a Hong Kong art tour, Jenkins alleged that a mysterious Italian man, a regime sympathizer, fixed up a fake North Korean one for Dona. While on a layover in Pyongyang en route to Hong Kong, she was arrested and forced to confess to being a spy — revealing the Italian man’s true intentions, according to the book.

A 2006 documentary on Dresnok, Crossing the Line, soon roused the suspicions of Bumbea’s brother, who believed something was amiss in North Korea.

When Dresnok’s son made an appearance in the film, the brother claimed she bore an uncanny resemblance to his Romanian sister. Soon after, a bombastic Italian newspaper investigation alleged that the art student had probably been ushered away to teach languages in North Korea, just like the rest of the captives.

The Romanian government filed a request for information, but didn’t hear back from North Korean authorities. Sadly, Dona died of lung cancer in 1997, ending any chance to tell her story.

South Korean film legends

After the devastating Korean War of 1950 to 1953, North Korea waged a shadow campaign of incursions and kidnappings against its southern enemy. Fishing trawler crews near the DMZ were attacked and seized, as were vulnerable farmers and construction workers whose identities could be stolen and used for spying.

The practice is hardly an issue today, but the South Korean government maintains that more than 3,500 South Koreans have been nabbed since the Korean War armistice.

The most high-profile of these heists was ordered by the second of three Kims who would rise to become North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Il.

A cinephile and maker of cheesy propaganda films, Kim (prior to becoming leader) apparently had trouble finding actual talent within his isolated kingdom. So instead of dipping into the regime’s drug-money coffers to hire a starlet, he did what any aspiring despot would do: ordered the abduction of South Korea’s most glamorous husband and wife celebrity team — director Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee in 1978 — while they were in Hong Kong.

The unlucky duo, then just divorced, was forced to slave away on a line-up of annoyingly bad films, including a Godzilla knock-off named “Pulgasari.” Shin was imprisoned for trying to escape twice, but the team finally broke free through the US Embassy in Vienna in 1986, while attending a film festival with a delegation of government minders, according to Shin’s Korean-language memoir.

At first, Kim Jong Il was convinced that the Americans kidnapped them, asking them to come home. But he later shelved their films out of anger. Shin died in 2006. His ex-wife, now 88, did not respond to a request for comment.

 

[AnonOps]

If these celebrities lived in North Korea

According to Washington-based Radio Free Asia, North Korea has made it mandatory for all male university students to have the same haircut as their beloved leader, Kim Jong-un. However, recent visitors to Pyongyang did not notice anyone with the “Dear Leader Kim Jong-un” haircut. Whether the story is real or just an April Fools' Day prank, it didn't stop us from imagining what some famous people would look with the haircut.

The boys of 1D sporting their new Styles

David Beckham has always been a trendsetter, but when the Dear Leader makes a fashion statement, Becks can't help but follow

If Sherlock needs to investigate a case in Pyongyang, he'd better look the part

As if Korean heartthrob Kim Soo-hyun couldn't look any hotter

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[AnonOps]

Works for Bosco, too

If girls could get the “Dear Leader Kim Jong-un” haircut, Miley would be down for it

And you know Justin would be rockin' it

Kim Jong-un with the original do
Photo: EPA


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