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An ongoing story this year has been North Korea’s ability to jam radio broadcasts into the country as well as the GPS systems of airliners using Incheon airport, the main gateway into South Korea as well as those of ships operating in the vicinity of the disputed Northern Limit Line. Earlier in the fall, the [...]
South Koreans sometimes label Chinese investment in North Korea as “economic colonialism.” I normally discount these concerns as slightly paranoiac but a series a press reports from last week are starting to make even me wonder. First, multiple stories appeared in the Chinese and South Korean press describing an agreement between the China Overseas Investment [...]
One of the more disturbing developments of the spring has been North Korean jamming of GPS navigation of airliners flying in and out of Incheon airport as well as ships traveling near the disputed Northern Limit Line. The North Koreans eventually stood down, but also earned a rebuke from the International Telecommunications Union, which requested [...]
According to South Korean authorities, the number of airline flights in and out of Seoul’s Incheon airport disrupted by North Korean GPS jamming now exceeds 250, but the North Koreans are not content: the DailyNK and Yonhap report that South Korean Coast Guard authorities released a statement that the interference has extended to shipping, affecting more than 120 ships. Although the action [...]
This winter, in an earlier post, we picked up on a piece by Martyn Williams alleging that North Korea was experiencing sporadic failures in its jamming of foreign radio broadcasts and even having difficulty keeping its own foreign radio service on the air. It was speculated that these difficulties were related to the seasonal pattern of [...]
We begin with corruption, one of our favorite topics. Kim Jong-un, the Magnanimous Comrade, in Greg Scarlatoiu’s parlance, announced a special amnesty for prisoners this year which Steph Haggard and Jaesung Ryu likened to a shell game. Now the Daily NK is reporting that the possibility of amnesty is being used to shake down prisoners. [...]
In his blog, North Korea Tech, Martyn Williams recently reported some interesting news on Koryolink, the joint venture between the Egyptian telecommunications chaebol Orascom (75%) and the government (25%) and North Korea’s only commercial 3G cell phone network. The company has recently signed up its 1 millionth subscriber. Yonhap also provided some interesting news related [...]
