
How to smuggle $1K into North Korea - admp
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/north-korea-defector-smuggling-information-120639.html
======
cantrevealname
One thing bothers me about the article. This guy Kevin is able to get elderly
relatives to practice good opsec. They walk to distant locations to make and
receive calls, presumably at predetermined times; they avoid mentioning real
names and other personally identifiable information; they speak for a strict
100 seconds or less. Carefully trained people could do all this certainly, but
how would you train an elderly relative you left in your backward homeland
with all this trade-craft, especially since you can't train them face to face,
but you're limited to brief phone calls?

Perhaps the opsec has been exaggerated to make the article more thrilling, or
the opsec is true but it's a professional smuggling ring not involving elderly
relatives.

~~~
j_lev
You're not the only one that is bothered by the article. The thing that
triggered my radar was that the entire thing read like fiction. If it looks
like a duck,...

The dictionary sounds like bullshit. North Korean and South Korean are
completely different dialects, with different orthography and spelling. Bigger
differences than different spellings in English. I can't see a dictionary like
that being of any use to his family.

There is no way sources can ever be checked, and that means anywhere from 0 to
100% of the article could be fabricated.

(edit: an analogy to better describe the dubious usefulness of the dictionary,
it would be like a native Greek using a French-English dictionary to learn
English)

~~~
brenschluss
> The dictionary sounds like bullshit. North Korean and South Korean are
> completely different dialects, with different orthography and spelling.
> Bigger differences than different spellings in English. I can't see a
> dictionary like that being of any use to his family.

Uh, totally wrong there. Might want to read up some more.

There are some minor spelling differences, pronunciation/accent differences.
North Korean doesn't use any loan words, so there's a great deal of different
terms for ice cream or radio, for example. But they're not totally different
dialects. Any South Korean can understand a North Korean TV broadcast, for
example.

~~~
j_lev
North Korea uses loan words, albeit from Russia.

~~~
jpatokal
English loan words, that is, which South Korean is packed to the brim with
these days. South Korean say _aiseukeurim_ , North Koreans say _eoreumbosung-
i_ ("ice pudding" or something).

------
BuildTheRobots
> Detection tools and systems to track down international phone calls made
> inside North Korea are becoming increasingly accurate and more widespread,
> so calls must be kept under two minutes.

Could someone elaborate on this... keeping calls <2min to stop them being
traced seems painfully Hollywood

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
These are operating off of Chinese cell towers near the border, so the Nork
authorities have no access to cellular system records. They have to use plain
old RF direction finding techniques to pinpoint the location of a signal, and
then catch a person with an illegal cell phone in their possession.

~~~
BuildTheRobots
Thanks -makes perfect sense. I didn't realise they were using an out-of-
country cell network to initiate communication.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Sure, it was in the last paragraph on page 1 of the article.

------
jkot
In my experience from communist Czechoslovakia, western stuff is not actually
prohibited. It is illegal for peasants, but communist elite can enjoy all
luxuries they can effort.

~~~
enedil
Chechoslovakia was never actualy communist. Like in Poland, Eastern Germany
and several other countries, it was socialist.

~~~
ADRIANFR
The difference between socialism and communism was all in the "communist"
propaganda. All east-european countries were "socialist" with the almost
utopian goal of becoming "communist". It's a label that could be changed at
anytime by the leaders. Technically, according to the doctrine, socialism was
"everybody contributes based on ability, and receives based on the
contribution", while communism was: "everybody contributes based on ability,
and receives based on their needs", which was utopian. Western countries did
not (want to) grasp the difference, so they just called the eastern block
"communist".

~~~
msandford
Under those definitions, isn't most of "socialist Europe" not really
socialist? I mean a lot of countries have got a safety net and welfare
programs and all that which seemingly are standardized, not indexed to your
previous income. So you pay in with taxes that are based on what you make (and
thus you contribute based on ability).

Or is the idea that you keep a portion of your pay after taxes the "receives
based on contribution" portion?

~~~
ADRIANFR
You have to understand that those were just slogans, with almost no practical
equivalent. Corruption was rife, and taxes were almost unheard of. You get a
salary (cash) and pay for goods with cash. No taxes on either end or annual
tax return. Unemployment was officially inexistent, (you could go to jail if
you had no job), therefore no welfare programs existed. Socialist parties in
Western Europe had no clue about what they were wishing for.

------
merraksh
_The stranger on the other line is usually a girl, a Joseonjok girl. The woman
gives Kevin a South Korean bank account number, to which Joseph wires $1,000._

Joseph was not mentioned before in the article. Is that another fake name for
Kevin, that the author forgot to replace? I don't understand otherwise.

~~~
yitchelle
From what I can comprehend of the article, Joseph is the name of the person
that "wired" the money into the Sth Korean bank. I guess that this is another
obfuscation layer for identity hiding.

------
jonah
Here's a piece from 2014 about sending propaganda to NK via balloon.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/we-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/we-
hacked-north-korea-with-balloons-and-usb-drives/283106/)

------
NicoJuicy
Since i once read that North Korea has a team of PR-people for online
communities ( like Russia does), could HN check for the ip range of North
Korea for possible propaganda here and indicate it? ( kinda interesting)

If someone of HN read this, the ip range is : 175.45.176.0 – 175.45.179.255 &
210.52.109.0 – 210.52.109.255

~~~
jmnicolas
You know what should interest you, is that YOUR country is astroturfing (and
probably much more than NK). There's probably 99% chances that you will detect
NK astroturfing (they're not natives), but how well can you detect
astroturfing from your country ?

~~~
logfromblammo
~Easily. If they espouse opinions contrary to my own, they must be government
shills.~

~Oh, hang on. I accidentally left my foil hat on. Let me take that off.~

It only takes a slightly elevated level of awareness. Usually, just knowing
that it is possible that a participant in the discussion could be a paid
propagandist is enough to spot likely candidates. While you can never really
know for sure, if you check their posting history, and they only seem to care
about exactly one thing, that's a strong indicator of suspicion.

On some of the message boards I frequented in the past, the general subject
matter was such that it was extraordinarily easy to spot the cop whenever one
showed up. They always did exactly the same thing, and it never worked even
once. It usually went something like this.

    
    
      A: Hey guys, we should get together and *do* something.
      B: Sure.  Tell us your plan and we'll tell you if we're in.
      A: [*describes an overtly criminal act, usually involving violence*]
      C: Go back to writing traffic tickets, undercover cop.
      D: Do you actually get paid to annoy us, or are you doing it on a volunteer basis?
      B: You should take a look at your bosses instead of spying on us.
      E: [*spouts unrelated crackpot claptrap*]
      (end of thread)
    

On a more general forum, such as HN, with a much larger and more diverse
audience, it is a bit more difficult to spot the paid propagandist. And the
professionals have honed their skills in the past few years. They spend more
time setting up for the payoff, building reputation and credibility, before
using an identity for a mission-critical message. They almost certainly have
voting rings set up on every site that uses voting.

Anyway, any genuine NK astroturfers would probably be doing it from a non-NK
IP block. They're just brainwashed by their cult-like government, not stupid.
They ones trusted to access the Internet to further the interests of their
leaders almost certainly have access to Chinese, Russian, and American IP
addresses.

~~~
jacquesm
Spot the shill might be an interesting game. How would you go about writing
software to do this?

~~~
task_queue
Might be harder as operations are aware that people can sniff out a shill or
sock puppet if they have five minutes and cared.

~~~
jacquesm
Tempted to give this a shot anyway.

------
msane
There is a growing amount of cheap contraband smartphones and electronics in
DPRK. When it reaches a critical mass, the only thing stopping a revolution
will be ISP access. Well-timed satellite or balloon based WiFi could foment a
revolution?

~~~
emilsedgh
Excuse me for my ignorance but why do you think internet access has anything
to do with a revolution?

Isnt a revolution a complex sociological phenomenon?

Im pretty much sure whatever holds DPKR together isnt lack of internet access.

Source: Iranian who lived through Iran's Green movement

~~~
msane
For Iran is your point, "what ultimately changed in the long run?". DPRK is
more despotic - I don't think their current government will actually work, or
last many years with a connected population. For them being able to
communicate with, or even see the outside world would be revolutionary. The
internet would begin to unravel the effects of 60 years of Juche.

~~~
notahacker
There's pretty good internet access in most despotic countries, few of which
have the advantages of social stability and breadth of surveillance apparatus
as North Korea

Of course the likes of Lukashenko and Mugabe have seldom tried to claim that
they're keeping their country _perfect_ , and there's a risk that North
Korea's propaganda is so unsophisticated it could end up looking utterly
laughable even to pretty well-indoctrinated North Koreans[1], but its pretty
hard to organise an effective resistance movement even when everyone in the
country hasn't been educated in the values of the current regime since birth
and the leadership hesitates to send entire families to gulags at the
slightest provocation. It's worth pointing out that those who might be best to
depose the Dear Leader, or at least undermine the hardliners in his inner
circle, have had always had the privilege of access to communications with the
outside world.

[1]but probably not as laughable as we think. If people with access to the
same education and media as us find ISIS' rather crass blend of simplistic
theology and beheading videos to be sufficiently appealing to trade their
comfortable developed-world lives to don burkhas and marry ISIS fighters, then
people occasionally watching broadcasts appearing to challenge those approved
by the propaganda police can quite happily continue believing in the probably
less-absurd cult of the unique virtues of the Dear Leader and the nation of
the cleanest people enough to _not_ die in a protest.

------
Lancey
> Smuggling goods is highly punishable, and letting people pass through the
> North Korean border, rather than shooting them, could get the border guards
> killed instantly.

This made me think the border guards have Running Man-esque bomb collars
around their necks. I'm sure there's consequences, but compared to shooting
smugglers I don't think their punishment would be that instant.

~~~
omegaham
Summary execution is pretty expedient, especially if you don't care about the
facts.

------
needhelpplz
I sometimes fantasize about setting up a website or a kickstarter that lets
people send balloons with the $9 chip, GPS, and tiny fans that will guide it
any point in the map. The problem with weather balloons that are being sent
from South Korea is that 1) Korean government are too much of a pussy to
aggravate North (given their lack of response after naval ship attack and
island shelling) so they attack activists 2) The weather balloons mostly end
up in unreachable places, no way of knowing if it was successful.

It would be like a website or a kickstarter where people could pay to send
packages that include communication equipment, non perishable food items,
medkits, insurgency, guerilla warfare, etc.

Imagine the impact this would have on North Korea when suddenly the citizens
are communicating anonymously with each other and outside world.

This can only be done if the balloons could self guide themselves using GPS
with a high degree of accuracy, and they be launched outside of South Korea.
Maybe it can be done from America but the pacific ocean is turbulent and it
will be tough to make it all the way in to North Korea. Japan is the best bet
but South Korea will probably pressure them. So this leaves out launching it
directly from the States, the challenge and costs go up dramatically since the
journey must be made across pacific ocean.

~~~
josefresco
"too much of a pussy"

Poor choice of language aside - South Korea has much more to lose in a direct
or indirect conflict, and even if victorious (very likely despite the "size"
of the NK force) would still sustain casualties that make them countering any
NK aggression ... complicated.

------
ballerindustry
"How to smuggle 1K..." Technically it was $700

~~~
sgustard
It's a good point. Kevin's mother asked for $1000, but she ended up with less.
Feels like sloppy reporting.

------
ck2
So this article just detailed for north korea government how people are
smuggling. Which means people are going to be found and killed.

How is this a good idea? This is people's very lives.

If even one person is executed over this, do the journalists just shrug and go
browse amazon some more or wander around the mall?

If you want to expose North Korea, expose the government, not the people
desperately trying to survive.

I love how we are freaking out about Iran, meanwhile North Korea makes Iran
look like disneyland and actually HAS nuclear weapons AND missiles they can be
attached to. The deep hypocrisy with only caring about Israel is thick and
deadly.

~~~
cantrevealname
> _So this article just detailed for north korea government how people are
> smuggling. Which means people are going to be found and killed._

The article is generalities. Don't you think the government would already know
all that? If the government had caught and interrogated even a single smuggler
or a single person who'd received foreign goods, they'd know far more specific
information than this article gave.

