The North Korean government has reportedly made plans to strengthen security of its mobile network by the end of this year by ditching Chinese telecoms equipment – just months after deploying it.
According to the Daily NK website, citing an anonymous source, the plan emerged in the wake of a conference of information and communication experts in Pyongyang last month to discuss upgrading the national mobile network. At the conference, some attendees argued that the current network is vulnerable to cyber attacks “due to its reliance on Chinese technology and equipment”.
While the source didn’t name names, Daily NK reported in November that North Korea had started importing second-hand equipment from Huawei to upgrade base stations to not only support the latest version of 3G, but also deploy 4G, which was reportedly launched at the start of this year.
According to the report published on Tuesday, the Cabinet’s Ad Hoc Committee on Economic Development has started work on replacing Chinese equipment with domestic gear by the end of this year “to create a secure mobile communication environment and strengthen security.”
The committee also plans to expand investment in cloud and quantum encryption technologies, with help from the Information Technology Research Institute of the State Academy of Sciences, the report said.
The plan aligns with the government’s overall goal of increasing self-reliance and beefing up security systems to not only repel external threats, but also strengthen internal supervision and control, the report added.
“They believe that if even a part of this plan is implemented, it will be an important step forward in preventing party, state, and military secrets or internal information from being leaked to the outside world, and in enhancing self-reliance in the information and communications sector,” the source told Daily NK.
While the plan is said to have wide support from the government, some experts have reportedly expressed concern that the timeline for achieving this by the end of the year may not be realistic.
