iPhone usage has been surging in North Korea. In this episode, we investigate this phenomenon and speak with the CEO behind the data. Statcounter's Data gs.statcounter.com/vendor-mar... Instagram: / mega.lag Twitter: / megalagofficial
I was in North Korea in 2018 and I got a rare chance to check a north korean smartphone (it was chinese), one of the girls in the hotel bar where we were staying liked me very much and gave me her phone to check it, they have something like a texting app, looked like ICQ back in the day if you remember it, some games, the internet (the phone operator's internet, because there was no wifi at all anywhere) was super slow, like 40 kb/s. It was interesting to see :)
That's fascinating, thanks so much for sharing! Actual Internet access though? I didn't know such a thing was casually allowed. Or is it NK's intranet?
I think I might have a hunch why the iphone share increased so much, at around that time (september/october 2021) apple rolled out its new iCloud Private Relay feature, which is quite similar to a VPN. It just seems like this might be related so probably worth investigating further
10:32 This is either an iPhone 11 Pro Max or iPhone XS Max. You can tell because the iPhone is in Gold, which the X didn't have as a color, and although it's hard to identify the left side of the phone (from the front) has 4 speaker grills, which the standard sized iPhones only have 3 on the left. From the front and Sides alone however it's impossible to differentiate an iPhone 11 Pro Max from a XS Max, since there are literally no physical differences from those angles
Though it's a bit difficult to tell if it's in gold because it almost looks like it's just silver getting some sort of gold reflection from a background object.
It’s a iPhone X it’s just the lighting that makes it look slightly gold you can see by that the speakers are the same on the left and right of the port. on a xs or 11 there is an antenna line on the Bottom left of the phone and the speakers arnt symmetrical
I don’t think it’s an iPhone at all. There are 4 speaker grill holes on each side. X has 6+6; Xs has 3+6; Xs Max has 4+7 … also assuming it’s gold, the antenna stripe should also be on the bottom of the device on Xs (Max) … pentalobe screws around the connector are also missing, also the lightning port has a pretty visible ring around it which cannot be seen in the video just go and watch the og video at 0.25x and pause it at the right moment
the other thing is, the camera punchout is on the top-center of the device, and no iphone had a centered camera, it reminds me of some kind of oppo phone. Going further, it has 4 speaker "dots" and none of the rounded bezzel iphones had 4 holes on either side, also the antenna bands are a little lower then on the normal iphone, in my opinion its some phone from the BBK family, or a cheap iphone knock off
at around 10:25 you can see the phone has just 1 camera placed in the top middle, where iPhone 10 would have speaker, so I'd say it's some kind of Xiaomi
I didn’t see this part but I was wondering if they hated the US so much they wouldn’t want to be using an American tech, neither would they be okay using South Korea’s Samsung, so the next obvious choice would be a Chinese brand considering their ties so Xiaomi or Huawei would be the perfect choice.
You said something about that company's data being anonymized. But, what I would like to hear from the CEO: Is there any way to get more insight about North Korean usage patterns? Are these devices connecting all the time, or are they only connecting at certain days/hours, such as at times when government censorship is on duty? Such insights, compared to other countries, would be of interest.
iPhones (like all American tech) is indeed BANNED. It’s probably diplomats or high-level government officials who have access to an iPhone AND the Internet.
It's well known that in North Korea, the majority of smartphones (in use by the public) are no-name Android phones (according to Tourists from before the 2020 Border Closure) and their computers which previously ran Windows 7, now run their own Linux Distro called "Red Star OS" (in English) which judging by the newest version available to people outside of North Korea (due to leaks) uses the KDE Plasma Desktop Environment (probably based on Debian but idk since I have never actually looked at the ISO). The Majority of iOS users are probably from government employees who work in high-ranking offices in the big cities (so not your average tram driver or food manufacturing facility worker who probably uses a cheap Chinese Android phone rebranded for the DPRK market) as well as any foreign diplomats whom may have returned to North Korea for their diplomatic mission in the country. There is also the chance that some iPhones have been smuggled into North Korea from either China or Russia and even South Korea (before their corporate employment deal with Hyundai [I think it was with that SK company but could be wrong] went sour)...
Ya, I saw few tourist videos back before 2020, where atleast in Pyongyang people had cheap chinese android phones. These phones came with limited no of preinstalled Android apps. There was no app store to search and download new apps.
You must be smelling rock salt for fun if you think they let people use iPhone, SPECIALLY in the government. The data comes mostly from foreigners visiting the country and accessing the Internet in the country, reality is even government officials do not get access willy nilly.
You will be surprising the amount of smartphone user in north Korea ( quite a lot now day ) especially in Pyongyang , there Indonesian guy whom stay in nkorean a few year that film stuff with his go pro totally check it out.
@@KayleeVRC yup but he did show the amount of folk in north Korean owning smartphone increase over the year another guy are Aram ( from sing ) one thing I have seen the north Korean can't own are PC and laptop haven't seen them much in normal household
More likely, they have their own browsers and/or even operating systems to lock down what can be accessed, and a browser like that could easily just have a hard coded to send a User-Agent tag as iPhone/iOS instead of whatever they call their software when making web requests.
@@nSiLEtan Yeah they could push an update to change to the new user-agent. Bearing in mind there is a North Korean version of Linux which is for the most part a one-to-one clone of macOS... it wouldn't surprise me.
@@SamTheEnglishTeacherr u talking ab red star os?? if so that shit is the biggest clone ever 😭 if it wasnt for the icons, colors, etc it’d look like an exact copy
I love your channel. You are one of the few that do it as a hobby. As a passion project. Reminds me of the good old days of RU-vid in 2008 when people weren't money-focused with their content.
As far as I know, North Korea's Red Star OS is based on Linux. If the browser used there is based on WebKit (like some Linux browsers like Epiphany), some websites recognise it as Safari. So it may be WebKit browsers being detected as Safari.
So far as I recall from running Red Star it had no browser. If it did it would likely be ice weasel or a variant of gecko. It is fairly ancient and unclear if it’s still used or ever had wide spread usage. While an interesting thought it does not explain the iOS version signature.
Sad to see that the RU-vid algorithm doesn't seem to like this as much as some of your other videos (it only recommended it to me after two days). It's s really interesting topic and I hope you won't be too discouraged by the lower view count, as we who find our way here definitely still enjoy it a lot!
Thanks man, appreciate that! In terms of CTR and AVD, this video is one of my top performers, so it's a little weird that it isn't getting promoted. Wondering if it's because spoke about Covid.
I wonder if what changed was that ISP or IP range (could simply be a specific APN on a mobile network) that Android users changed IP ranges to one that is not yet properly tracked as being North Korea, and the only users left of the previous ISP are iPhone users (like.. just the Kim household or something)
Anyone with a smartphone connected to the internet in NK would be under constant close scrutiny. All smartphones would be government issued. This data makes perfect sense, they upgraded and bought in quantity to address their new PR campaign. Hence 99.99% of phones & devices were changed out within a very short timeframe. apple is the logical choice because NK doesn't want China spying via Huwai, and doesn't want SK spying via Samsung; apple serves no master but its own interests. There are maybe a dozen people in NK who can pick and choose what smartphone they want.
The fact that the borders are reopening is really interesting! I am personally quite interested in the DPRK and I didn't know this yet. Exciting! Very much looking forward to seeing what happens with the AirTag. Did you consider maybe sending a new AirTag over now? So that it can be there in time for the border to (supposedly) reopen?
As you like roasting DHL... you should do a video about the time DHL won the KFC chicken delivery contract in the UK which was so badly handled, KFC ran out of chicken and a number of branches had to close (and DHL lost the contract).
You are a gem. Thank you for sharing the creative talents you have and the discerning, thoughtful modalities in which you ponder and investigate the human condition. I am hooked on your content. I noticed the cross on your… Bluetooth speaker? in your room. Are you a believer? Thank you again for being you. God bless you sir.
For such a big switch in devices in such a small timeframe I would guess all internet connected devices are state controlled and they did an ‘enterprise’ upgrade.
iphones are like the first or second most used brands there, the other being samsung theres like some footage of iphone/ mac usage like in one of moranbong's concerts, where theyre using a macbook (i forgot what year its from)
I just saw your colorblind glasses (and had to check out more), so now I gotta say: Dude, you gotta upload more! Your videos are great (sure, they can improve, but you are the next Johnny Harris), just get more consistent so we can all discover you!
(But take care of yourself, so if this is all you feel like is realistic then stick to it! I've been burned out, and it's better to take an extra year to "make it")
Hi, interesting Video! When I looked at it, the first what came to my mind is that maybe the Apple Private Relay has to do something with this? Because this was released at the end of 2021 at the same time the traffic increased rapidly… Maybe the normal use of the internet is blocked, but Private Relay routes the traffic over Apple Servers so it wont be blocked?
I thought about this too! Because the dates def match up. But i assumed Apple wouldn’t have North Korean IPs for the egress servers. But someone reached out recently claiming they do. I need to look into it deeper to confirm
Hello from Seoul! Thanks for the amazing video as always. This particular one was especially interesting since it was related to the NK. It's out of context but I noticed that your TV screen got some Korean characters at 8:35. What are those? I'm kinda curious.
Not sure about Korean characters, but this is a screensaver on most recent LG TVs and the text says something like “please press any key except power to continue watching”
the title of this video is exactly what I thought when you said your apple air tag was tracked as being in n korea. Air tags connect via iphones around it.
10:28 That is probably not an iPhone. The notch at the top has a centered selfie camera whereas iPhones with notches have a much more subtle looking one to the right of the notch. The speaker grills at the bottom are identical between each other (or at least they look like it) and no visible screws next to the charging port are visible, even in the original video. Antenna lines on the sides are also way brighter than the body, which is not how they look in gold/rose gold iPhones. Hard to figure out if that is USB-C or Lightning, but most likely the former. Based on this, this is mostly likely another device not coming from Apple. Knowing possible trading routes and the stats you showed, would probably say is a Xiaomi or an older BBK device.
Yep, that's an iPhone XS or XS Max for sure. As that was a year that came in a gold version. -- Btw, love the videos ... wish you made them more often.
It's a country-wide firewall that changes your user agent. First they spoofed random user agents, hence the wild swings in stats. Now they spoof latest iPhone only, hence the 100% market share and orderly up to date versions each month.
This is not possible as the user-agent section is part of the HTTP request headers which would be encrypted by TLS, as per the HTTPS protocol. - Li (proxied by Mia)
@@LiEnby I'm not sure how strong man in the middle attacks can become if an entire state does it at the ISP level. I imagine it works with a reverse proxy to defeat https.
@@dani33300 ? So .. what? North Korea has their own DPRK internal address for a website and it has a different domain like say Facebook-dprk which is http only and on the dprk internal intranet and then that securely connects to real facebook and forwards your stuff over to that ? Is that what your suggesting Because this would work but it would also break in some instances
Amother thing is foreigner in north korea : embassy , UN worker beside north korean elite bought from black market and north korean that work oversea ( quite large amount btw , they even work in poland a few years back )
Something happened to the Apple location pings last week, my apple watch catched a ping from other side of a planet while sitting on a table next to me. 😂 And they continued to send that ping from other country for almost the whole day.
I once opened my security camera app and saw some else’s entire camera setup I could view live and even watch back the last 60 days or rather. Never reported it to Eufy but you bet I switched to Google after that.
There have been some NK IP address owners on the Chinese internet lately (you know, Chinese social media platforms will show everyone's IP address attribution). From what I've heard from the owner of the NK IP address, it's likely that one (or possibly several ?) VPN providers got a NK VPS and used it to set up a proxy server. Anyway, NK IP and VPS do exist, but they seem to have very little bandwidth. as for accessing sites like google? since I havent got this VPN yet, I dont know :-)
That phone from Song A definitely looks like an iPhone x/xs/xs max. maybe it could be an iPhone XR. Interesting. I hope that one day we can freely talk to people from North Korea on the Internet but that probably takes many years if that ever happens
My theory would list a few possible reasons. First could be that since Samsung is a South Korean company, they would not want to have a company south of the DMZ to have huge market share. The DPRK could cite spying concerns and they could pass that as law. Would have to check on that, but seems logical. Second, Huawei exports could have been limited due to the semiconductor shortage throughout the pandemic, and the fact the market share is expected to be so small, it wouldn’t make sense to send DPRK officials an updated phone when everywhere else has a huge return. Same could be said for all other brands for official sales. A third possibility is the black market that North Koreans rely on to get foreign films, tv shows, etc. For years they would get it on Video Tapes, DVDs, and USB drives. But simply getting an iPhone could hold much more data. Plus, if it’s a jail broken iPhone, the it would give them more apps and movies, and they won’t have to sign up for an Apple ID to use it. That would be considering it’s NOT a high government official’s device that can access the greater World Wide Web. And it would indeed help the governments influencer goals to have a smart phone that is more recognizable to their intended western audience. They can even say they like XYZ game on the App Store and play it every day.
There are addons that you can install on your browser that replicate different devices. If I was using edge but wanted to replicate search results that an iPhone would display, you can replicate that on an edge browser which would then claim it is the most recent update.
Thank you for making another video. Please make more. TY............. What providers does NK have? The data usage for Apple phones is higher than others. Hence Are their internet g etc.? 4G service companies strong? I can't see how NK can have such a high usage age of iPhones if their Internet coverage isn't vital. thinking TY!
@@WatchNoah very few, there must be some stable connections for this amount of iPhone users. The video is excellent. I hope he adds more to this piece.
An alternative explanation could be user agent spoofing. I can use firefox on a linux computer and using a simple browser extension to make it look like im using safari on IOS with the click of a button. That browser extension generally shows the newest operating system and browser versions at the top of the list so that could explain why north koreans are using the newest version of IOS. The the question is why IOS and not any of the other possible user agents they could choose from?
The ease of changing ones browser via the alteration of their user agent data makes this data completely unreliable. In regards to VPN's that would require nk to allow foreign leasing of domestic nk servers, and from the little research I've done, I haven't found that to be the case.
Am i the one asking myself why a website would track my screen size? A mobile phone's screen size you would know by the model of the phone, which they already collect. Why do they want to know the size of my monitor?
I wonder if the surge in iPhones could be a result of supply chain issues? Maybe iPhones were the only smartphones they were able to get shipped in for a while?
It’s a iPhone X it’s just the lighting that makes it look slightly gold you can see by that the speakers are the same on the left and right of the port. on a xs or 11 there is an antenna line on the Bottom left of the phone and the speakers arnt symmetrical
well when it comes to some old refurbrished devices then iphones and samsung are the only oens in the games as there are plenty of 3rd party replacement patrs, other brands - you will be happy to even find any working battery replacement, not great, just working.
Wrong. The user agent string of a browser can be spoofed. There's a ton of browser extensions out there that do it. All that's happening here is that the user agent string is being spoofed & declaring the platform the browser's running on to be iOS.
Perhaps StarLink? - maybe wifi is restricted, so it’s not entirely inconceivable that the DPRK gave certain folks these kits to access the greater internet.
I don't know the details if the starlink protocol, but I'd guess it would be a server at the base station of the satellites that would actually make the web request, then translate it for satellite usage, and the base station would probably be in America or similar, so all the ips would show as American
i think foreign student who go to study in north Korea have iPhone and by web analytics and math as forign student get private intenet service in northkorea
Well as they say follow the money.. let’s think about the manufacture Foxconn… and who they might do business with also why iPhone… similar as why luxury cars are bought in North Korea also coincidentally same year certain things the USA doesn’t want manufactured in certain places….
