North Korea Is Jamming China’s Phone Signals
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North Korea has stepped up its restrictions on cellphone reception along its border with China. Signals from Chinese cellphone towers increasingly are unable to reach Chinese SIM card-equipped phones in North Korea.
Local phones are restricted to the North’s own network, as Pyongyang seeks to prevent the spread of information from abroad. North Koreans regularly use cell phones smuggled into the country from China to access telecom signals in border areas to make international calls and surf the Internet via their handsets. Since Kim Jong Un fully assumed power in 2012, North Korea has tightened control at the China border, and the state has heightened surveillance of mobile phones in addition to building walls to make defections more difficult.
The North Korean leader mandated the blocking of signals in order to prevent communication between North Koreans seeking to escape and brokers on the other side of the Yalu and Tumen Rivers. South Korean news network YTN reported the jamming of signals has been ongoing under Kim’s rule, but with the rise of Workers’ Party cadre defections, the North Korean leader has implemented stronger measures to restrict North Korean communication with the outside world.
Although meant to dissuade the North Koreans, protests are being heard from the other side of the border.The efforts by North Korean authorities to block citizens’ cell-phone use along its northern border are also affecting communication networks in neighboring China, drawing Chinese protests and demands from North Korea that China pay money to halt the jamming as Chinese residents of areas near the border are finding it increasingly difficult now to get clear signals.
Though local officials asked North Korea’s Yanggang province to end the jamming, North Korean officials answered the request, asking that China pay a very large sum for the jamming to be stopped.
Reaching a stalemate, as Chinese local authorities are unwilling or unable to pay the fee requested by North Korea who, for its part, is unlikely to ease on communications restrictions any time soon, many residents of the Chinese side of the border are moving away from the area, and not just to get clearer phone signals. Many are afraid of being robbed or killed by North Korean border guards or other North Korean residents while completely helpless.
“If North Koreans come across the border to China to commit crimes, people can’t use their phones to call for help,” a local Chinese resident said.
