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North Korea
AsiaEast Asia

North Korea buying Chinese surveillance cameras in push to tighten control, report finds

  • State media reports show surveillance - using cameras mostly sourced from Chinese vendors - becoming more common at schools, workplaces, airports
  • But, the isolated country’s digital ambitions have to contend with poor electricity supplies and low network connectivity, a report says

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A closed-circuit television camera monitors students in a classroom. The study’s findings align with widely held views that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is stepping up efforts to tighten the state’s control of its citizens. Photo: Shutterstock
Associated Press
North Korea is putting surveillance cameras in schools and workplaces and collecting fingerprints, photographs and other biometric information from its citizens in a technology-driven push to monitor its population even more closely, a report said on Tuesday.
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The state’s growing use of digital surveillance tools, which combine equipment imported from China with domestically developed software, threatens to erase many of the small spaces North Koreans have left to engage in private business activities, access foreign media and secretly criticise their government, the researchers wrote.

But the isolated country’s digital ambitions have to contend with poor electricity supplies and low network connectivity. Those challenges, and a history of reliance on human methods of spying on its citizens, mean that digital surveillance isn’t yet as pervasive as in China, according to the report, published by the North Korea-focused website 38 North.

The study’s findings align with widely held views that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is stepping up efforts to tighten the state’s control of its citizens and promote loyalty to his regime.

These efforts were boosted by the Covid-19 pandemic, during which the North imposed stringent border controls that were maintained for three years before a cautious reopening in 2023.

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New laws and recent reports of harsher punishments suggest that the government is cracking down on foreign influence and imported media, likely helped by fences and electronic monitoring systems installed on the border with China during the pandemic.

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