Major North Korean websites stay inaccessible

December 28, 2014
North Korean students work at computer terminals inside a computer lab at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, North Korea during a tour by Executive Chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt. North Korea is literally off the charts regarding Internet freedoms. There essentially aren’t any. But the country is increasingly online. Though it deliberately and meticulously keeps its people isolated and in the dark about the outside world, it knows it must enter the information age to survive in the global economy.(AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, File)

North Korean students work at computer terminals inside a computer lab at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, North Korea. It has been a week since the country’s Internet connection went completely down in the early morning of Dec. 23. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, File)

SEOUL (Yonhap) — Some major North Korean websites remained inaccessible Monday as the country’s Internet outage continued for a week.

North Korea’s main propaganda websites, including Uriminzokkiri, Ryugyong and Ryomyong, could not be reached as of 9:30 a.m. The Internet servers of the affected sites are located in China.

The homepages of other major organs based locally, including the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and the Rodong Sinmun daily newspaper, were stable as of Monday morning.

It has been a week since the country’s Internet connection went completely down in the early morning of Dec. 23.

Speculation of a cyberattack by the U.S. has been spread because the outage came just days after U.S. President Barack Obama vowed a “proportional” response to the North’s alleged hacking of Sony Pictures.

Pyongyang has threatened to retaliate against Sony’s release of a movie, which deals with an assassination story targeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, but it has denied responsibility in the Sony hacking.

One Comment

  1. Michael Zimmerman

    December 29, 2014 at 1:19 AM

    I admitted posting North Korea’s cidr and ip addresses in Usenet group alt.just.trolling.