North Korea Executes People Caught with Mobile Phones

A South Korean government think tank has claimed that North Korea has increased its public executions of people caught owning a mobile phone. The Korea Institute for National Unification said in a white paper that executions of those who "circulate South Korean leaflets and sell videos and use cell phones are on the rise" without citing numbers.

A GSM phone network was built at the Rason (formerly Rajin-Sonbong) free trade zone by a private consortium, Loxley Pacific. Another phone network also Pyeongyang and Hyangsan, Pyeongyang and Gaeseong and Wonsan and Hamheung, although it is not clear who built that network or which technology it used. Both networks was apparently shut down, or at least forbidden to the general public following a train explosion in 2004, which some claim was an attempt on the life of the ruling dictator, Kim Jong-Il.

While no mobile network is available to the general public, many phones are smuggled across the border with China, where the Chinese phone networks are reported to have an unusually strong signal strength which reaches deep inside the North Korean border zone.

Source http://www.cellular-news.com/story/24361.php