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Inside a phone smuggled out of North Korea
(www.bbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2025
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The woman in the video published an article alongside the video. In the article, it says she obtained from Daily NK. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98pnx35xj2o
DailyNK is a anti-DPRK and anti-communism news website. DailyNK has received funding from National Endowment for Democracy (NED) ie US government funding.
DailyNK published a technical specification breakdown of the phone in the video in February 2025. The article says that they recently obtained the phone. They say this phone is called “Samtaesung 8”. You will notice in the BBC video that there is also an 8 on the phone wallpaper. The article doesn't mention the autocorrect feature or the screenshot surveillance.
https://www.dailynk.com/english/north-korea-smartphone-samtaesung-8-revealed/
https://archive.is/mNon0
DailyNK published an article about the screenshot functionality of the Samtaesung 8 phone in April 2025. This article contradicts the BBC video. This article says that DPRK cellphones only recently gained screenshot functionality and the phone blocks screenshotting when the News app is open (maybe copyright protection?). The BBC video said that the phones had no access to internet but if it has a News app, then it has some form of internet. The screenshot list on the BBC video also doesn't make sense, the timestamps are inconsistent and the file names are illogical.
https://www.dailynk.com/english/n-korean-smartphones-add-screenshot-function-with-notable-exceptions/
https://archive.is/mTlmw
The BBC video seems to be just straight up lying. I have skepticism for the information provided by DailyNK, but they at least show screenshots of the technical information about the phone.
Edit /// The Korean name for the phone is 삼태성8 . You get a lot more search results when searching for the Korean name. There is also a newer model Samtaesung 9 or 삼태성9 . There are some videos on youtube in Korean.
Maybe some form but "THE" internet is different from "A" internet. THE internet is the big global network that you access propaganda rags like the BBC on as well as the website for the Russian military, as well as the page for the New York History Museum as well as Temu among many other things. An internet could just be a few networks connected together and indeed could include access to news services even ones accessible via HTTP or similar.
So technically correct I suppose in that if true you can't with that phone go and buy Yankees tickets online or post "down with western imperialism" in the comments section of the NYT but you can access remote networked resources. I approve of China's great firewall so I can't really argue against something like this.
NK has pretty wide access to a national network called Kwangmyong, which to my memory and understanding most closely operates like an intranet/extranet system. You have access to useful local resources at factories, government buildings, libraries, universities, etc. This really encouraged me to start moving my own stuff over to self-hosting because it was just so much nicer to use things in this way.
Then you have access to lighter stuff like news, weather, texting, etc. over the mostly 2g/3g mobile network. Honestly it's very much like having a phone from 2008.
huge L if north korea gives any shits about copyright