North Korea suffers nine-hour nationwide internet outage

On June 7, major North Korean websites went offline for about nine hours, U.S.-based North Korea media NK News and Reuters reported. North Korea’s entire domain name system was disconnected, causing a complete internet outage. Although the cause remains unclear, experts say it likely stemmed from an internal issue rather than an external cyberattack.

Between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., numerous official sites, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Air Koryo, the Korean Central News Agency, and Rodong Sinmun, became unreachable. Access was restored around 11:30 a.m. the same day. The Washington-based think tank Stimson Center reported similar internet disruptions in neighboring countries such as China and Russia.

NK News reported previous North Korean internet outages in April and June last year. In October 2022, a distributed denial-of-service attack disabled the country’s internet for at least six hours. The latest outage lasted much longer than previous incidents.

Some analysts believe North Korea may be trying to completely block citizen internet access as part of a communication strategy overhaul. Currently, only about 1 percent of the elite have access to the global internet, while most rely on the domestic intranet called Kwangmyong.


이기욱 71wook@donga.com