September 26, 2023
Evergreen

How to hack into North Korean state media

Meet the New Zealand bedroom programmer squeezing North Korean state media for more juice

Publishing in multiple languages and on two separate websites, North Korea's state media service the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) has recently been increasing its output to as many as 80 articles per day - in Korean, Chinese and English.

The site is regularly hacked by groups such as Anonymous who regularly slow down––but rarely disable––the Pyongyang-based domain. Hacking, however, can sometimes have a more productive use. A tool coded by New Zealander Frank Feinstein that archives and visualizes state propaganda has been making the otherwise daunting task of reading between the Pyongyangology lines significantly more easy.