Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, who shares the following article from The Korea Herald:
N. Korea halts radio station known for sending coded messages to spies in Seoul (The Korea Herald)
North Korea is pressing ahead with measures to disband its inter-Korean organizations, apparently stopping a radio station previously used to send encrypted messages to its spies in South Korea.
As of Saturday, the North appears to have stopped broadcasting the state-run Pyongyang Radio and cut off access to its website.
The latest move comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered “readjusting and reforming” its organizations in charge of inter-Korean affairs during a key Workers’ Party meeting last month amid growing cross-border tensions.
Pyongyang Radio is known for broadcasting a series of mysterious numbers, presumed to be coded messages, giving directions to its agents operating in South Korea.
The North resumed such broadcasts in 2016 after suspending them in 2000, when the two Koreas held their first historic summit. [Continue reading…]
If I knew how to write, I planned to write more accurately, but I don’t know how;;
It is true that Pyongyang Broadcasting has been discontinued, and South Korea’s jamming has now been canceled. First of all, when I listened to it in Seoul.
Article from KBS, South Korea’s public broadcaster
A new Video https://youtu.be/sKWLn_L1txU
Intriguing is the sound of some of the broadcasts are in stereo.
By the way, KiwiSDRs will decode DRM audio if the signal is strong enough to keep the bit error rates low einough.
Update to my previous comment: Listening to a Japanese SDR from Nagano on 3.98 mhZ, nearly 17:20 UTC, 2:20 AM in DPRK. Pulse jammers are certainly active up against Echo of Hope from the ROK. VoK on in Choson-mal on 75.7 and 9.665 mhZ. NO KCBS or Radio Pyongyang active relaying domestic services.
Not sure if this means Radio Pyongyang, KCBS, or what. I’ve heard KCBS in the past month via Japan based KiwiSDRs, but weak; I don’t expect the power or technical situation to be all that great in DPRK anyway. Unlike some other people I’ve also never been able to decode their DRM. Currently I can’t receive any Korean language stuff from DPRK on a Japan based SDR as of the time of this posting (1455 UTC)
Just clarifying a few things….
There has been a major change in the DPRK’s position on a united Korea in the last month. For the majority of the period since the Korean War, the policy and a main social theme have been the “reunification” of the southern provinces (i.e., South Korea), which they claim are occupied. At a Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) session on Monday, leader Kim Jong Un ordered officials to permanently remove formal cooperation and communication avenues with the South as part of his recent overhaul of unification policies.
So… The radio service “Radio Pyongyang” is indeed off the air. “Radio Pyongyang” is not the Voice of Korea external service, though of course, very old-time DXers 🙂 will remember the days when “The Voice of Korea” was also labeled Radio Pyongyang.
Pyongyang Pangsong (Radio Pyongyang) for the past few decades has been the Korean language (kind of a domestic service) for the occupied southern provinces (i.e., the country of South Korea) as well as the Korean cultural regions of the PRC. It was broadcasting on MW, FM, and shortwave.
The reason for Radio Pyongyang also being labeled a “numbers station” in the various articles comes about because at times in the past in the regular Radio Pyongyang programming, there were educational exam/test answers read out as number sequences, which in likelihood were actually intelligence messages.
I’m thinking of writing up a full article on what’s happening in the next few weeks; meanwhile, you can read more about Radio Pyongyang and hear hours of its programming on my website…
https://www.behindthecurtain-northkorea.com
Navigate to the “online resources.”
Cheers,
Mark
Jumping the gun. Probably temporary for repairs or mods.
Thank you Dennis for this article, and keep ’em coming…
I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t idly rummaged through the SW bands of an evening, but as of the last time I did so Voice of Korea (“VoK”) – as Radio Pyongyang has been known for some years – was one of the signals I’d encounter…
Intrigued by the Korean Herald article, it seemed out-of-character for a Communist country to close down its overseas broadcaster so I decided to do a quick fact check – and found it’s not closed down at all, see below:
Here’s a link to VoK’s X (Twitter) account:
https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fvoice_of_korea
I’m not a X-itter / X-eratti (What’s a Twitterratti called now Twitter is ‘X’?) so I haven’t read VoK’s latest X posts
And here’s a link to VoK’s website:
http://www.vok.rep.kp/index.php/home/main/en
It appears to be kept uptodate with the latest posting being dated “16-1-2024”, that’s today, on the Asian side of the International Dateline – at the time of writing it’s 07.12am in Pyongyang, so they’re up bright and early….
Here’s the latest from VoK’s website:
“WPK General Secretary Kim Jong Un’s
Revolutionary Activities
– 10th Session of 14th SPA of DPRK held(2024.1.16)
– President of State Affairs Kim Jong Un inspects major munitions factories(2024.1.10)
– President of State Affairs Kim Jong Un inspects newly-built Kwangchon Chicken Farm(2024.1.8)
– President of State Affairs Kim Jong Un inspects major TEL production factory(2024.1.5)
– President of State Affairs Kim Jong Un visits farm machine exhibition (2024.1.3)
[All with photo links – I didn’t open them though]
News
· Greetings to President of State Affairs Kim Jong Un from Singaporean President(2024.1.15)
· Greetings to Bangladeshi PM(2024.1.15)
· Hypersonic missile test-fired(2024.1.15)
· DPRK government delegation leaves for Russia(2024.1.15)
· DPRK government delegation arrives in Moscow(2024.1.15)
Highlights
· Kwangchon Chicken Farm inaugurated(2024.1.14)
· DPRK Premier inspects different units(2024.1.14)
· DPRK FM to visit Russian Federation(2024.1.14)
· President of State Affairs Kim Jong Un sends wreath to bier of late Kim Kyong Ok(2024.1.13)
· Greetings to President of State Affairs Kim Jong Un from Iranian President(2024.1.13)”
73
Julian
Thank you for this article, but as other’s noted, it seems to be less than reliable…
I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t idly rummaged through the SW bands of an evening, but as of the last time I did so Voice of Korea (“VoK”) – as Radio Pyongyang has been known for some years – was one of the signals I’d encounter…
But Intrigued by the article, I decided to do a quick fact check:
Here’s a link to VoK’s X (Twitter) account:
https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fvoice_of_korea
I’m not a X-itter / X-eratti (What’s a Twitterratti called now Twitter is ‘X’?) so I haven’t read VoK’s latest X posts
And here’s a link to VoK’s website:
http://www.vok.rep.kp/index.php/home/main/en
It appears to be kept uptodate with the latest posting being dated “16-1-2024”, that’s today, on the Asian side of the International Dateline – at the time of writing it’s 07.12am in Pyongyang, so they’re up bright and early….
73
Julian
Some type of conflict may be on the horizon:
https://www.38north.org/2024/01/is-kim-jong-un-preparing-for-war/
Agreed, it’s a misleading headline.
Some may misinterpret this to mean that Radio Pyongyang is going off.
I agree . This could be temporary while DPRK “cleans house” of double agents in the south.