North Korea Flaunts 'Homemade' Smartphone

To say North Korea hasn’t exactly had a friendly relationship with modern communications is something of an understatement. After all, one of the cornerstones of an effective dictatorship is control of the media, which can be easily undermined if citizens are able to hop on the Internet or make an international phone call.

There are two ways to deal with this: elimination or total control. For the most part, it seems that the country has opted for the latter option but, in typical North Korea fashion, it’s not always done in an even or effective manner.

For example, earlier this year, the North Korean government started allowing the use of rental cell phones and SIM cards within the country’s borders. Then, last week, it backpedaled and started cracking down on the mobile phone use it sanctioned. To be fair, cell phone service was only introduced after Google threatened to reveal the country’s gulags on Google Earth for all to see.

Now, likely in an effort to avoid this kind of back and forth behavior in the future, North Korea has unveiled its own smartphone, which it claims offers “complete security.” Dubbed the AS1201 Arirang after a famous local song, the device offers a way for the regime to control Internet access and calling from the source.

Of course, the official word from North Korea doesn’t mention anything like this and instead focuses on how the “performance, quality ad packing” of the Arirang meets Kim Jong-Un’s approval and, most importantly, that the device was made entirely in North Korea. Reports have emerged, however, suggesting that the handsets were actually made elsewhere.

Indeed, North Korea Tech speculates that the Arirang is actually made to order by a Chinese manufacturer, which does seem likely. Meanwhile, the fact that the phone runs Google’s Android OS is quite a conundrum in and of itself.