VICE News
North Korea’s Online Bubble | Proton Data Wars
2026 • E6 May 26, 2026 8m
Inside North Korea, every piece of technology is built for surveillance and control. This is Red Star OS, the regime’s custom operating system that secretly embeds metadata watermarks into files, allowing authorities to trace them back to the original computer. The control doesn’t stop there. North Korean smartphones are heavily restricted, the country operates its own isolated intranet called Kwangmyong filled with state propaganda, and software like “Red Flag” reportedly captures screenshots from devices every few minutes for security monitoring. In North Korea, being caught with outside media can lead to prison camps, forced labor, or even execution.