Post by : Meena Ariff

Photo: AP

Internet access in North Korea has stopped working, and experts say this might be due to a problem inside the country, not because of a cyberattack.

A researcher named Junade Ali, who watches internet activity in North Korea, said on Saturday that the entire country’s internet is not showing up on global systems. This means no internet connection is being seen from North Korea — whether the internet goes through China or Russia, it’s not working at all.

He said, “It’s hard to tell if this happened by mistake or on purpose, but it looks like the problem is inside North Korea.”

North Korea has some websites that people outside the country can usually visit, like the Foreign Ministry and the country’s main news agency. But on Saturday morning, these websites were not working when someone tried to visit them.

Most of North Korea’s internet traffic goes through servers in China. It’s believed that very few people — less than 1% of the country’s 25 million people — have direct access to the real internet. Regular citizens use a local intranet called Kwangmyong, which is closely watched and controlled by the government. This system only shows information allowed by the country’s leaders.

In the past, North Korea has faced cyberattacks. For example, in January 2022, a hacker from the United States managed to take down every North Korean website that was visible to the outside world. He used a method called a DDoS attack, which overwhelmed the websites with too much traffic, keeping them offline for more than a week.

North Korea is also known for using its own hackers. Leaders in the United States and the United Nations say that North Korea has groups of hackers working to steal money online. In 2024, one report said North Korean hackers stole over $1.34 billion worth of cryptocurrency in 47 different attacks — the highest ever recorded.

The current internet shutdown is still being watched, and experts are trying to understand what caused it.