North Korea built a secret cell phone network for Kim Jong Un

(Image credit: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)

published 20 August 2015

In an interview with NK News, Ahmed El-Noamany, the former technical director of North Korea's Koryolink cellphone network, revealed that North Korea has a secret "third" network that uses technology found "outside the North" and that "is not accessible to normal users."

While it's no secret that Koryolink actually comprises two networks — one for locals and one for foreigners, with users barred from communicating between the two — El-Noamany said that there is also a third network inside North Korea, implemented specifically for something he's not witnessed in other countries before."They have another network for the VIPs that is totally separated from everything … a 3G network that is not accessible to normal users, but only for them," El-Noamany said. [NK News]

The 3G network has its own algorithms and operating systems, and although it is not invisible to the network's other users, no one aside from a select few, such as leader Kim Jong Un and his cronies, can register on it. "Even if the normal network was breached," El-Moamany told NK News, "you'd have the whole [third network] secure."