from the ruling party newspaper, the state news agency, a cooking site with recipes for Korean food, and online learning. In 2016, North Korea had approximately two dozen websites; by 2017, it claimed to have 168. The country also has a video-on-demand system to access state television programming. “It’s no Netflix,” says Williams. The regime in recent years has also introduced online shopping primarily aimed at smartphone users who might be interested in clothing, women’s accessories, cosmetics, specialty food items, and furniture. Kretchun observes that “North Korea is systematically moving its people onto networks over which it has complete control,” a command more extreme than that of other repressive states like China, which is also experimenting with similar information censorship and surveillance. An even smaller number of North Koreans—the elite of the elite—have permission to access the World Wide Web. That means only a tiny minority and top leadership are aware of world affairs, including perceptions of North Korea, the development of new technologies, and popular Western culture. Kim Jong Un almost certainly is one of these consumers of outside information. The government prohibits its general population from listening to or watching foreign media. Radios and televisions are preset to receive only domestic programming, with the threat of severe punishment to compel obedience.
Perhaps Kim’s awareness of outside criticism of North Korea and his experience living in Switzerland, coupled with his political and tech savvy, have been driving his regime’s efforts to project North Korean propaganda outside its geographical boundaries. The Korea Computer Center acts as a clearinghouse for the intranet and grants access only to regime-approved information. The regime has an official Twitter account and a number of websites devoted to making its propaganda and “news” accessible to outsiders. While the West has touted the Internet, social media, and virtual communities as a democratic leveler, where individual freedoms and potential are unleashed, the North Korea example shows how the Internet, as defense experts Peter Singer and Emerson Brooking argue, “has not loosened the grip of authoritarian regimes…[but] has become a new tool for maintaining their power.”
In this context, North Korea’s self-imposed isolation and use of repression to squelch dissent are not a deficit but a strategic advantage that provides the space for Kim to hone one of the newest methods of coercion toward cementing his power and constraining the ability of the United States and South Korea to punish his bad behavior. Kim already has the decades-old prison camps and the ideological infrastructure to disseminate regime propaganda. The new cyber tools provide another way to send that information, furnishing his bureaucrats with the implements to further police people’s thoughts and behaviors.
From inviting foreign journalists to Pyongyang to amplify and lend legitimacy to the regime to using technology and cyberattacks to control the flow and consumption of information inside and outside North Korea, Kim has expanded the geographies of his control. Magnifying his power is the insidious way in which the regime’s repressive measures seep into the consciousness of both the North Korean people and foreign visitors and journalists, who self-censor either to ensure that they do not run afoul of North Korean authorities or to maintain access.
For ordinary North Koreans, yielding to Kim’s intimidation is a life-or-death decision, given their leader’s mastery of his inherited art of repression to ensure his supremacy, updated to use modern technologies and accommodate the realities of a market economy. But for his older half-brother, who roamed outside the boundaries of North Korea, lobbing criticism from the safety of his perch in China, Kim had a different plan.
It is the morning of February 13, 2017. Kim Jong Nam, Jong Un’s older half-brother and his father’s eldest son, enters the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. He is wearing a stylish light-colored blazer with jeans, designer loafers, and a backpack; what looks like a Louis Vuitton satchel he was known to carry is casually slung across his right shoulder. He appears to be just another middle-aged tourist or businessman, comfortably corpulent, waiting to catch his flight back to his home in Macau, known as the Las Vegas of China, an epicenter of gambling and glitz where he has been living in exile with his wife, son, and daughter. He walks purposefully into the airport, looks up at the departure screen—his fluid movements suggest he is familiar with this airport—and strolls toward the check-in kiosk.
Suddenly, a woman runs up to him and rubs his face with her hands. A second woman quickly follows and