Junade Ali, a UK-based analyst monitoring North Korea’s online activities, told Reuters the disruption likely resulted from internal technical issues rather than a cyberattack.
Ali said the outage appeared similar to a network overload, suggesting internal problems such as power outages or equipment failures. He noted that North Korea's internet infrastructure disappeared completely from monitoring systems, including connections through China and Russia.
Several North Korean state-run websites, including the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Rodong Sinmun newspaper, and the foreign ministry, remained inaccessible as of Friday afternoon.
Internet access in North Korea is heavily restricted, available to roughly 1% of the population. Most North Koreans use a closed domestic network called Kwangmyong.
North Korea has faced similar outages in the past. In January 2022, the country's internet was disrupted for about six hours due to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.
View more comments