North Korea ramps up phone surveillance, stoking fear among traders

North Korean authorities in North Pyongan province have sharply intensified phone surveillance in 2026, intercepting both landline and mobile calls to crack down on traders conducting business across provincial boundaries, a Daily NK source in the region reported on Wednesday. The crackdown has prompted a growing number of people to avoid phone calls altogether, communicate only in person, or use coded language when calls are unavoidable.

“The National Intelligence Agency‘s wiretapping has gotten so bad in cities and counties across North Pyongan province that people are trying not to make calls at all,” the source said. “For sensitive matters, they meet in person, and if they absolutely have to call, they speak in code.”

North Korea’s National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the country’s primary domestic counterintelligence service responsible for monitoring citizens for political and economic crimes, has long conducted communications surveillance. But sources say the intensity of monitoring has recently reached levels that are being felt acutely in everyday life.

The immediate trigger appears to be a case from around June 10. A gold trader in Kusong city, who had been under NIA watch but had continued operating under the assumption that he had enough protection, received a call from a contact in Ryanggang province. Shortly after, NIA agents raided his home without warning and seized both foreign and domestic currency. The trader was taken in for questioning, and rumors circulating in the area suggest the cash confiscated amounted to tens of thousands of U.S. dollars.

“From what I understand, the call was intercepted while he was receiving the contact information and address of a money transfer broker,” the source said. “The NIA tracked that phone number, investigated the broker first, and then raided the trader’s home.” A single phone call had unraveled the entire network: both the broker and the trader were detained in sequence.

Coded language and borrowed SIM cards

The case spread quickly through North Pyongan province and has accelerated an already-growing wariness about communication. “There probably isn’t a single person who doesn’t know that both landlines and mobile phones are being tapped,” the source said. “More and more people are limiting calls to simple greetings and handling anything sensitive in person or in code.”

Ordinary North Korean people are openly voicing their anxiety. “The NIA is basically CCTV,” some have said. “If you move, they follow. If you talk, they listen and show up at your door.” Others have gone further: “The best thing is to not call at all,” or “I’m thinking of just selling my phone,” or “I paid good money for this thing and now it’s getting me surveilled — I feel anxious every time I make a call, even if I haven’t done anything wrong.”

For traders whose livelihoods depend on phone-based coordination of goods, transport, and payments, quitting calls entirely is not realistic. “Phone calls are essential to running any kind of business,” the source said. “But people are starting to say that a phone is now a time bomb.”

The concern is heightened by mobile phones specifically, which can be tracked by location in addition to being wiretapped. In response, some North Korean people have begun trying to obtain SIM cards registered in other people’s names in order to make calls without being identified. But the source cautioned that this is not a reliable workaround. Even with a different SIM card, if the content of a call or the identity of the person being called is traced, the authorities can still make an arrest.

“The NIA is now basically telling people openly: ‘We’re watching and listening to everything, so be careful,'” the source said. “People are trying to find ways around the surveillance, but for now there’s no real solution.”

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