This Smartphone Smuggled Out of North Korea Is Absolutely Wild

"Smartphones are now part and parcel of the way North Korea tries to indoctrinate people." Autocomrade North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, is tightening the leash to stop the influence of South Korean media from crossing the border, where it's often smuggled on USB sticks and SD cards. As the BBC reports, consuming foreign media is punishable by imprisonment and even death in the dictatorship. In 2023, Kim even made it a crime for people to use South Korean phrases or speak in a South Korean accent. It's an Orwellian degree of absolutist control over the freedom of speech. And it extends to deep features of localized smartphones in the reclusive nation; a North Korean phone that was smuggled out of the country and obtained by the BBC was programmed to automatically replace forbidden words as they were typed, demonstrating the extraordinary extent of the Kim regime's efforts to control the way people express themselves — in an incredibly literal way. Big Brother For instanc ... Read full article.