A glance at the selection of sites shows a large amount of official state websites, e.g. that of the regime’s committee for cultural relations or the maritime affairs authority. Perhaps surprisingly there are also a lot of sites pertaining to normal and everyday topics, ranging from Korean food recipes to film festivals. News, sports and communication portals, as well as a website for the state’s airline, offering the possibility to book a flight there and then. The complete list of domains can be found on Reddit. Since going public, several of the websites on the list are no longer accessible. This may be down to the sudden increase in visitor numbers. However, it could also be the case that they have been offline now for quite some time.
Alongside North Korea’s severely limited supply of domains, there is a policy of ever-present and very strict monitoring of internet users. The regime casts a stern and watchful eye over all internet activity and has the ability to cut off anyone’s online access at any time. This is set to be the case for the foreseeable future, as the global trend towards a more communal and international online monitoring system has up till now, been wholeheartedly rejected by the North Koreans. Control and monitoring continue to play a central role in all interactions with internet users. So how then did all this domain information come to light, given that the regime manages so well to keep its internal affairs so secret? The reason for this is a security leak in the Korean network, identified by an IT specialist from the west and who as a result succeeded in filtering out the 28 domain names. He then published his work on the programming portal GitHub.