They’ve “never had unfettered access to the internet before.”
Skin in the Game
The Pentagon confirmed earlier today that roughly 10,000 North Korean troops have made their way to Russia, and massing near Ukraine’s border and marking the first time North Korea has waged a major war since the early 1950s.
The unusual alliance gives the soldiers, who are thought to be in their teens or early 20s, an unprecedented glimpse at what it’s like to live in the 21st century — including access to a world wide web that isn’t hampered by notoriously strict restrictions and doesn’t require special authorization or constant monitoring by government agents.
According to one of Financial Times chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman’s sources, the lads are making the most of their brief and dangerous stint abroad.
“A usually reliable source tells me that the North Korean soldiers who have deployed to Russia have never had unfettered access to the internet before,” Rachman tweeted. “As a result, they are gorging on pornography.”
Open Season
North Korea’s internet is famous for being extremely locked down. Even accessing the web is largely reserved for those able to secure the required authorization.
According to a 2016 investigation by security engineer Matt Bryant, North Koreans could only access 28 different websites at the time, most of which were state propaganda and news about Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un. (It’s unclear whether that number has changed over the last eight years.)
So it’s safe to say the troops had an extremely hard time accessing porn — if it was even on their radar.
But the North Korean soldiers won’t have access to all the porn the internet has to offer. In 2015, Russia implemented sweeping bans on the world’s largest porn websites, including PornHub and YouPorn.
In 2021, Russia’s online content regulator proposed limiting access to all porn by locking it behind state-run services under the guise of wanting to protect children.
There’s a small chance the soldiers may also get a glimpse of independent news while perusing porn online. In 2022, Ukrainian digital marketing company Baydachenko started buying ad space across Russian websites to link Russians to independent news sources and teach them about what was really going on.
The agency eventually resorted to running these ads on largely unmoderated Russian porn sites, making it an effective counterpropaganda operation.
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