Every 5 minutes, this smuggled North Korean phone takes screenshots, you will be horrified to know why

Representational image/ courtesy: Unsplash

Our smartphones are heavily protected. We lock them with PINs, Face ID, or all kinds of security measures to keep our secrets safe from hackers, scammers, or anyone curious about the little details of our lives. Apps like WhatsApp even use end-to-end encryption, meaning not even the app itself can read our messages. That gives us some peace of mind — or so we think. But did you know there’s a country where smartphones actually take screenshots without the user’s permission every five minutes? Sounds like a digital cage, right? Well, for people living in North Korea, this is their harsh reality.

A smartphone smuggled out of North Korea is revealing just how deeply the government controls its citizens — down to every word they type and every screen they see. At first glance, the phone looks like any modern device. But underneath, it’s loaded with software designed to watch and control its user.

The phone was shown in a BBC video, with an animated North Korean flag waving on the screen as it powered on. While the exact brand wasn’t confirmed, the interface looked a lot like phones made by Huawei or Honor, except the phones are heavily modified to suit the North Korean regime’s strict rules.

Amongst many odd features the phone has, one creepy feature was that the phone automatically censored certain words. For example, if someone typed “oppa” — a common South Korean word for “older brother” or “boyfriend” — the phone would change it to “comrade” and pop up a warning that “oppa” can only mean “older sibling.” Similarly, typing “South Korea” would be replaced by “puppet state,” matching the government’s harsh official language.

But the most unsettling part? Every five minutes, the phone secretly takes a screenshot of whatever the user is doing. These images are saved in a hidden folder the user can’t access. The North Korean authorities can later review these screenshots to keep track of what people are up to.

This phone was smuggled out by Daily NK, a media group based in Seoul focused on North Korean news. Experts say this kind of censorship is built deeply into the phone’s software to not only restrict information but to control people’s thoughts and reinforce government propaganda on a personal level.

While smartphone use is growing in North Korea, it remains under strict control. Phones can’t connect to the global internet and are constantly monitored. The regime also cracks down hard on South Korean culture, seeing it as a threat. Youth patrols regularly stop young people on the streets to check their phones for banned words or media.