North Koreans seeking greater access to information are engaged in a digital “game of cat and mouse” with Kim Jong Un’s totalitarian regime, according to a new analysis of the country’s telecommunications devices.
The study, conducted by researchers on behalf of US-based non-profit organisation Lumen and seen by the Financial Times, shines a light on North Korea’s “nascent hacker underground”, in which a small number of tech-savvy citizens are trying to circumvent software and monitoring systems installed by the regime on their smartphones.
The North Korean hackers do so at the risk of hard labour, a lengthy spell in a political prison camp or even a death sentence.