North Korea is experiencing a significant internet outage that has taken down all known external online access points, according to a UK-based internet monitor. However, early assessments suggest the disruption may have been caused by internal factors rather than a cyberattack.
Junade Ali, a cybersecurity researcher who tracks internet activity in North Korea, reported on Saturday that the country’s entire internet infrastructure appeared to have gone dark.
“A major outage is currently occurring on North Korea’s internet — affecting all routes whether they come in via China or Russia,” Ali said. “Hard to say if this is intentional or accidental – but it seems like this is internal rather than an attack.”
Several of North Korea’s external websites, including the official Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) and the Foreign Ministry, were inaccessible as of Saturday morning. Attempts by news outlets to reach these sites were unsuccessful, confirming the apparent total blackout.
North Korea’s global internet connectivity is extremely limited and tightly controlled. Virtually all international traffic is routed through servers in China, with some secondary links believed to pass through Russia. Estimates suggest that only a tiny fraction — less than 1 percent — of North Korea’s 25 million people have access to the global internet.
Instead, most citizens use a state-controlled intranet system known as “Kwangmyong,” which provides limited and heavily curated domestic content.
This is not the first time North Korea’s internet infrastructure has suffered major disruptions. In 2022, U.S.-based hacker Alejandro Caceres carried out a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that took down every publicly accessible North Korean website for over a week.
North Korea itself has been repeatedly accused of launching cyberattacks against foreign targets. The regime has allegedly built a vast network of state-sponsored hackers to conduct cyber espionage and financial theft. According to a December 2024 report from U.S. blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, North Korean hackers stole a record $1.34 billion in cryptocurrency last year across 47 cyberattacks.
