North Korea has employed new state-of-the-art devices in order to increase the efficacy of mobile monitoring and detection to preclude information from leaking outside of its borders. Most importantly, however, the new system will strengthen already stringent punishments for those caught making overseas phone calls, a strictly illegal practice under North Korean law.

“Penalties for those who made international phone calls has intensified,” a source from Musan County, North Hamkyung Province informed Daily NK on March 5th. “First-time offenders will face ‘strict warnings’ according to the new regulations and be slapped with fines; those caught a second time will be sentenced to at least a year of manual labor as punishment for their transgressions.”

This move is the latest in the perpetual battle waged by the North Korean authorities to stamp out illegal cell phone use among residents and residents devising myriad ways to evade the regulations. As previously reported by Daily NK, expensive German-produced radio wave detectors were employed in specific border regions, replacing cheaper Chinese detection devices, to block residents from making outside phone calls. However, the scope of this measure has increased exponentially, with these German contraptions replacing the antiquated Chinese-manufactured versions in all border areas, according to the source.

“Until last year, we could head into the hills of nearby villages to make phone calls, but now we’ve got to trek deep into the mountains for at least three hours just to make an outside call,” he said. "But now we have to walk deep into the mountains for about three hours in order to make a call. As a result, the price for renting [Chinese-manufactured] mobile phones has seen a fourfold rise, increasing from 40,000 KPW [5 USD] to about 100 RMB.”

[Source: Daily NK]