North Korea experienced a significant internet outage on Saturday, cutting off access to state-run websites and severing much of the reclusive nation’s connection to the outside world for several hours.
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The disruption rendered official news services, the foreign ministry, and the national airline, Air Koryo, temporarily inaccessible. Websites began to return online slowly around midday, according to checks carried out by Reuters.
The cause of the outage remains unclear. However, technology experts believe the incident was likely the result of internal issues rather than an external cyberattack, as both Chinese and Russian links to the country were reportedly affected.
Junade Ali, a UK-based internet researcher who closely monitors North Korea’s limited online infrastructure, said: “Hard to say if this is intentional or accidental, but seems like this is internal rather than an attack.” He also confirmed that North Korea’s entire internet infrastructure had vanished from monitoring systems during the outage, with email services also impacted.
South Korea’s cyber terror response centre, a police division that oversees North Korean cyber activities, could not be reached for comment.
Martyn Williams, a North Korea technology specialist at the Washington-based Stimson Center, echoed similar conclusions, stating that the apparent failure of Chinese and Russian connections suggested the problem originated within North Korea.
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North Korea is known for maintaining one of the most tightly restricted internet systems in the world. The vast majority of its population cannot access the global internet and are instead limited to a domestic intranet curated by the government. Only a select elite, primarily within the ruling regime, are permitted full access to the open internet.
The country’s online presence largely consists of websites pushing state narratives and propaganda aimed at international audiences.
Though Saturday’s outage may have been accidental, North Korea has previously suffered large-scale internet disruptions suspected to have resulted from cyberattacks. The state is widely believed to operate elite cyber units, including the Lazarus Group, which has been implicated in various attacks on foreign companies and financial institutions, as well as in cryptocurrency theft and laundering. Pyongyang, however, continues to deny any involvement in hacking or cybercrime activities.
