- 2 days ago
Hands on with 2 smartphones that have been smuggled from North Korea.
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Big thanks to DailyNK for securing the devices and their insight: https://www.dailynk.com/english
Download the Saily app or go to https://saily.com/boss to get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code BOSS at checkout.
Big thanks to DailyNK for securing the devices and their insight: https://www.dailynk.com/english
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TechTranscript
00:00These are two extremely rare phones from North Korea, and it's kind of insane that I'm even
00:06holding them. The North Korean population is so cut off from the outside world that
00:10it's almost impossible to even get a text message out, let alone two fully functional smuggled
00:15phones that show us in crystal clear detail what it's actually like to be a North Korean citizen.
00:20So this is the Heian 701. It's one of the country's budget phones. Just to give you an
00:24idea of how little is known about this stuff, you can google the phone's name and nothing will come
00:28up. Absolutely zero. And then the second is the Sam Taesung 8, which is a flagship North Korean
00:34phone. And yeah, this is different to South Korea's Samsung, which translates to three stars. This is
00:39Sam Taesung, which translates to three huge stars. You're going to be seeing a lot of this whole,
00:45my dad could totally beat up your dad energy. But that's because convincing North Koreans that they
00:50are superior to South Koreans, that they are morally purer and militarily stronger, is about the most
00:55effective way of keeping them loyal to the government. And it's pretty clear when you look
01:00at these phones, that the smartphone is playing a big part in that. I can actually show you this
01:05right now by trying to type on these phones. So if I write Nam Han, this means South Korea.
01:10The second that I hit the space bar, that gets autocorrected to puppet state. It is bonkers seeing
01:17censorship, this explicit happening in real time in front of my eyes. You physically cannot send the word
01:23Nam Han even if you try, which shows just how committed North Korea's government is to sustaining
01:28its narrative that South Korea is this inferior, less individual country that just blindly follows
01:34whatever the US asks them to. Other ways of wording it, like Republic of Korea, that doesn't even get
01:40corrected. That just turns straight into asterisks, kind of like you're a child and you just tried to
01:45make your club penguin username a swear word. And you can actually see the censorship becoming more
01:50invasive as time is going on. Because if we use this Heian phone, which came a few months before,
01:55this one lets you write North Korea as North Korea. But the Sam Taesung doesn't even let you
02:00do that. The only way that you're allowed to refer to North Korea now is Joseon, the traditional name
02:06for the Korean kingdom. And then South Korea, almost as if they're belonging to them, is South Joseon.
02:12But it gets worse, because Daily NK News, the guys who actually secured these phones in the first
02:16place, and whose basement I'm sitting in right now, they've probed around and found all sorts of
02:21extra oddities in the software. Like how, if you type Kim Jong-un, the name of the current leader,
02:26into any app, it will make the text bold the second you finish the word. Or how all sorts of South
02:32Korean slang is just subtly corrected to the more proper North Korean approved way of saying the same
02:38thing. Presumably because a lot of this slang originates in some capacity from South Korean media.
02:43And the North doesn't want their population to even indirectly experience that. But probably the
02:48single craziest example of this is if we type oppa. This is a common South Korean expression that can
02:53be used to mean either older brother, or in slang terms, boyfriend. Which in itself does raise a few
03:03questions. On these North Korean phones though, it corrects the word to comrade. Accompanied by a
03:08warning. This word can only be used to describe your siblings. Imagine getting a warning for attempting
03:14to type a slang word. That's moderation on a level that I have never experienced before. But I would
03:21say even more significant than autocorrect. The biggest factor in controlling information going in
03:26and out of North Korea, and the main reason that the country is still this cryptic bubble and we barely
03:32know these phones even exist is the internet situation. Or really, the lack of one. Look at
03:37this. On the Heian phone, you can swipe down from the top and you see your control panel that looks
03:42basically the same as every other Androids. And there's even a Wi-Fi button there. But when you press
03:46it, absolutely nothing happens. Weird. But let's go into settings to click on Wi-Fi directly. But you can't.
03:54And they've actually gone a step further with this more recent Sam Taesang. Because you go into the
03:59quick settings, there isn't even a Wi-Fi icon at all. It's like they don't want you to even consider
04:04that the feature could be as accessible as that. The only way to get something that even resembles Wi-Fi
04:10is this. It's called Mirai. And it needs so many details from you, including your government ID
04:16and an authenticated North Korean physical SIM card, that it's pretty safe to assume everything you do
04:21while using it can be traced right back to you. And even with all of that, this still doesn't get
04:27you onto the internet. There's actually no way for a North Korean citizen to do that. All this can
04:33get you is access to a highly curated North Korean intranet where you can look at specifically
04:38government approved TV news propaganda and apps. More on that in a bit. But the key thing to know for now
04:44is it doesn't look like it would be a great experience. The app itself tells you to expect speeds
04:49between 2 and 33 megabits per second, less than a 14th of the speeds that South Koreans are getting
04:57on their public Wi-Fi. I imagine the way that North Korea's leaders are saying this is they know that
05:02the second they give their population access to the open world wide web, it's game over for being able
05:07to control the way they act and think. But at the same time, they can't give the people nothing if
05:13they're trying to convince them that their country is truly superior to all others. Hence, this careful
05:18substitution of traditional Wi-Fi features for this highly traceable Wi-Fi equivalent that
05:24reinforces national pride as opposed to diluting it. But those speeds are so dated. And to be honest,
05:31everything about using both of these phones feels dated. Like it's pretty sad that this Sam Tae Sung is
05:36one of their modern flagship phones. It was only released recently in 2023 in North Korea. It was priced
05:42pretty close to $1,000. But it looks like a mid-range Huawei phone from 2021. Actually, let me be clear.
05:49It really looks like a mid-range Huawei phone from 2021. I'm almost getting deja vu looking at it. The
05:55way the camera module has an identical style and position. The way the body and the screen curves
06:00around in a seemingly identical way. Even this incredibly unique Huawei-style cutout around the
06:06buttons and this red line in the middle of the power key is the same. Plus, for security reasons,
06:11I've got to keep the IMEI number hidden. But when we traced it back, it does look like this phone
06:16was manufactured in China, just like Huawei phones. So I think there's two possible explanations.
06:21Either this phone was actually secretly made by Huawei themselves and supplied to North Korea for
06:27them to add their software layer. Or Sam Tae Sung just decided, we like the look of that one.
06:33Let's copy it. Because you're about to see this yourselves, but so much of the content on these
06:37phones is copied content already. Why not the phone design too? But also that unlike the Huawei that
06:43this looks so similar to, this phone does have a thicker bezel and a notch. This extremely tasteless
06:49font on show throughout the whole user interface. And then the only form of branding on the camera
06:53is a feebly written 64 megapixel that gives me absolutely zero reassurance it's going to be a good
06:59experience. And it is not. On the Heian phone, we're just getting extremely poor grainy image
07:05quality all around. And even though there are three cameras on the back of this phone, there is still
07:09no ultrawide and no zoom. So both extra cameras are just useless macro and depth cameras. A trend that
07:16globally speaking started to die out pretty fast after 2020. And so the idea that this thing released in
07:222023 with that kind of setup shows the time lag that we're operating with here. And then on the
07:27flagship Sam Taesong, the camera is super buggy. We couldn't even get it to flip around to the rear
07:33cameras. It's also got this really unusual watermark plastered over it, which when we reverse it spells
07:38out, please contact Heinitron. Now I did a little digging and turns out Heinitron is a small private
07:45China based company who makes a lot of smartphone parts. So it kind of looks here like they've supplied
07:50some of the bits for this phone, but then North Korean Sam Taesong has just like not paid their
07:56license fee or something. Regardless though of whether this phone is a secret Huawei collab or
08:01just a blatant ripoff, it doesn't change the fact that it is terrible value when you consider the
08:06global market. But that makes a lot of sense. With North Korea, we are talking about a very unusual
08:11market that has almost no competitive pressure. There's almost no incentive to give people cutting
08:16edge tech. And if anything, the more dated the tech, the simpler it is, and therefore the easier it
08:21is going to be to control. That would also explain why the Heiang is still running Android 10,
08:26with seemingly no ability to update beyond that, and why Sam Taesong is stuck on Android 11,
08:32making it five years worth of updates behind current Android. Let me show you what I mean by all this
08:37copied stuff. So there is an app literally here with a Microsoft Word logo. You open it up and it gives you
08:43the option for Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. But I can assure you what you are getting here are not
08:49Microsoft apps, not even close in functionality. I would actually go as far as to say that
08:53at least 50% of the icons that you see on these phones are stripped directly from other companies,
08:59like File Manager and Compass. Those are basically Huawei icons that are very slightly reskinned.
09:04Maps is an almost one-to-one of the Google Maps icon. This random game uses the same icon as the
09:11MobiOffice work application. But let's just zoom out for a second. Even the official Sam Taesong
09:17wallpaper. I'm pretty sure they have literally just downloaded the wallpaper from an Honor phone
09:22and then added an 8 to it. And then if I go over here to the about phone section,
09:28I recognize that image. That image is actually stripped straight from the promo material of the
09:34completely different looking Huawei Mate 30 Pro phone from years ago. And yet it is serving as the
09:40poster image for the Sam Taesong 8, which makes me side with the theory that this is a copy of Huawei,
09:46as opposed to made by Huawei. Because if it was made by Huawei, surely the company would use an
09:51image that at least matched the design of the phone. There's a whole library of informational
09:55videos that you can buy as part of North Korea's intranet, like this one, all about the football
09:59club Arsenal. And on the face of it, you're like, oh, this is really premium, how professionally
10:03produced. But look a little closer. And you can see this is actually ripped straight from an Amazon
10:08Prime series. It's just instead of stay in the game, it's titled sweat for the win. And it's got the
10:14logo of a North Korean company plastered across the entire length of it. But there is literally
10:18no way that this North Korean company could have bought the license to sell this content since
10:24there are literally sanctions on US companies like Amazon for collaborating with them. There's games
10:29too, tons of them. But I just want to show you this football game for a second. It opens with
10:34bizarrely the same logo that we just saw on the Amazon Prime show. So it seems like this is some sort of
10:39large scale media redistribution brand who's taking international content and making it North Korea
10:45compliant. Then we see the boot up screen with the game's title being International Soccer League 2.0,
10:50which is just so interesting because this shot of Messi's face, I reverse image searched it,
10:56is not from International Soccer League 2.0, but instead a screen grab from a trailer of Japanese made
11:02pro evolution soccer. The other thing that I think is absolutely fascinating about this football game
11:07is the Asian players are missing. Like you can select the team, Tottenham Hotspur, with all the
11:12correct roster as of 2022 when the game is launched, but with the only South Korean member of that team,
11:18Son Hung Min, not present. They just chopped him. Again, presumably to not show North Koreans that
11:25South Koreans have proper international athletic careers. In fact, just the general situation with apps
11:31in North Korea is so different to what you and I are used to. The first thing that jumps out is
11:36there's just so many of them. Like have you ever seen this many apps pre-installed on a smartphone?
11:41This right here is a medicine app, but a medicine app where you can order whatever you might need for
11:45home delivery. There's maps with navigation too. Although, fascinatingly, it doesn't show a clear
11:51dividing line between North and South Korea and also doesn't let you zoom any further out than the
11:57country itself. It's a little bit more advanced than I was expecting in some ways too. Like there's a store
12:02here where you can buy things like smart watches and TVs all using an electronic wallet and it's
12:07part of the intranet. It's also on this phone really surprising to see if we look past the logo
12:12that is very clearly just an NBC ripoff. This is online gambling with even the option for sports betting,
12:19as well as just a pretty hefty catalogue of video content that you can download onto the phones. But
12:24you can also see that the North Korean government's influence permeates every layer of this. Even the
12:30types of movies available. I couldn't find one from the US or South Korea. But Russian movies?
12:37Loads of them. Remember, the criteria here is not which movies does the North Korean population like
12:42the most. It's which movies does the regime want the population to watch. And so it makes sense that it's
12:48all filled with Russian content since Russia is one of North Korea's closest political allies. And
12:53Russian ideologies line up very closely to North Korean ones. There's also, weirdly, a bunch of
12:59Indian movies, including ones that I've seen before, like Three Idiots. The link between North Korea and
13:04India isn't as clear cut, but the guys from Daily NK have a theory that Indian culture hits a bit of a
13:11sweet spot. It's kind of different enough to seem exotic and interesting to North Koreans, but while still
13:16not posing a threat to their culture in the way that Western content does. And then there's just a
13:22whole load of apps that feel not just guided by the government, but directly requested by them. Like
13:27this one is entirely biographies of past and current North Korean rulers. Something else I've never seen
13:33before is a general guidance app, which is split into four categories. Laws, regulations, a legal dictionary,
13:40and then common sense, which really is exactly what it sounds like. It's so strange. It's like,
13:45how should we legally understand the family? Who are relatives? Can't relatives marry? I wonder
13:51if the idea is giving every single person the same set of ideologies and learnings and even
13:58there's like a humor section here so that they effectively become the same person to squash
14:04individuality. There's even a cooking app which guides you through how to make traditional North
14:08Korean cuisine. And all of these more official looking apps, they open by first showing you a famous
14:13quote from one of their leaders, which so feels like something you'd see on the loading screen of
14:18a dystopian video game. But this is real life. And then there's also just a ton of games to play. Why is
14:23this one booting up with the Delta Airlines logo? Most of them feel pretty simple with a big emphasis on
14:29offline play, which is true for the whole phone experience. It's actually wild how much we've been
14:33able to show and do. And that's all no doubt because the internet situation in North Korea is
14:39so sketchy. So crazy amount of stuff on both of these phones. But there's a very good reason for
14:45that. See, getting new apps is not as easy for North Koreans as it is for us. They have an app store,
14:51you can download apps on your own. But, and I can't actually quite wrap my head around how this is the
14:56reality. You can't open those apps until you've taken your phone to an in person store where they
15:02will authorize them for use and download the necessary back end data for them to function. And
15:07believe it or not, there's an extra wrinkle that comes with this. Your apps in North Korea
15:13expire. So this one here is telling me it's run out and is basically asking if I want to pay for six
15:18months or for 12 months for a bit of a discount. Effectively making every app a paid subscription, even
15:24ones you would not expect to be, like the laws of North Korea. Bearing in mind North Korea is one
15:29of the poorest countries in the world, with its national income per person being just 3.4% of that
15:36of South Koreans, this feels like a pretty tough pill to swallow. I think it's likely that just the
15:42concept of being able to sustain a large library of apps is a luxury that very few will be able to
15:48afford. And that's assuming you can even afford the phone in the first place. Now even if you did find a
15:53way to sideload your apps without going to a physical store for that authorization, or if
15:58you found a way to get around the app expiration system, which we realize you could temporarily do
16:03just by changing the date on your phone to an earlier one, there's a very important reason why
16:08you might not want to try that in North Korea. And it's called Red Flag. Red Flag is an underlying
16:13layer of surveillance software that appears on all phones sold in North Korea. We know it exists
16:19because we can see the effects of it. And I'm told older versions used to be really easy to see and
16:25get around. But in these newer phones, Red Flag is now baked into the lowest level of the Android
16:30software, making it almost untraceable and impenetrable. Plus it blocks off developer settings,
16:36which you can normally unlock by tapping this build number several times, meaning that it stops you
16:40figuring out what is really going on behind the scenes. But the idea of Red Flag is to persistently
16:46make sure that what you're doing on your phone is legitimate. So every file, every app, every photo
16:52that you take has a digital signature, a record that signals to the phone where that file originated
16:57from. Red Flag makes sure that the only files or apps that can be opened on these phones are either
17:03ones with the North Korean government signature or a self signature, which is files that originate from
17:09the phone itself, like photos from your camera. Anything else originating from anyone else won't have an
17:15approved signature. And so will not open, it'll just get automatically deleted by the software
17:20when it's sent to one of these phones. Now that doesn't seem to have stopped people from trying to
17:24get unauthorized content to work. There was an extensive report from Martin Williams and Niklaus
17:29Scheiss, which goes into how some would try to skirt the system by opening foreign files via the phone's
17:34web browser. But now that the signature checks are happening on a deeper device level, it can pick
17:39those up. It doesn't work. Or there was a daily NK report last year that mentioned while North Koreans
17:44couldn't store outside videos on their phones, they could insert SD cards containing the material
17:49into their phones instead. However, there is one final, very sinister surveillance feature clearly
17:56designed to deter any attempts at this. These devices, both of them, will take periodic screenshots
18:03as you're using them. You don't see these screenshots being taken in the same way that you'd expect to,
18:07but you know it's happening because I can actually show you the folder where they're being stored.
18:12I can see this has actually been taking screenshots today while I've been recording this video. The
18:19frequency of the shots seems to vary, but it's many times per day. And the most alarming part of it is
18:24all you can do is look. You can't click on them, you can't check them, you can't delete them. Now,
18:29whether the phones are sending those grabs over the intranet to the government continuously, or if
18:34they're just used when an official has doubts about you and wants to specifically confirm their
18:39suspicions, it's anyone's guess. But would you want to risk it in North Korea? Based on accounts from
18:45people who've escaped, this is a country which, since at least 2020, has had a law that spells out
18:51distributing and even just watching South Korean entertainment is punishable by death. People who
18:57distribute this content are tried alongside drug criminals. It's considered the same tier of crime,
19:03which says a lot about the priorities of the regime. So it really feels like every part of these
19:09devices, from the words you're allowed to type to the videos you're allowed to watch, are designed to
19:14reinforce a single narrative. North Korea is superior, foreign influence is dangerous, and everything you
19:21do is being watched. It makes me very grateful for how easy tech is made for the rest of us. I'm kind of
19:27curious, compared to the hour that it would take to go to a physical store to install a single app
19:32on a North Korean phone, how long does it take to install an entire internet connection with Zaley,
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19:53processing order, and done. 20 seconds. That's not bad at all. That's basically why I'm using a
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