![A North Korean holds a foldable smartphone on state-run TV. [SCREEN CAPTURE]](https://www.koreadailyus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/0709-Radio.jpg)
North Korea has amended its Radio Wave Management Law to explicitly ban the inflow of information from South Korea, a move seen as part of broader efforts to stymie the spread of South Korean culture.
Pyongyang convened sessions of the Supreme People’s Assembly Standing Committee in December 2019 and October 2023 to revise the law, according to U.S.-based North Korea monitoring website 38 North on July 8.
A comparison between the revised law and the previous version, last amended by the Standing Committee in June 2015 and regularly published by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, reveals significant expansions in the scope of regulations concerning radio waves and wireless communications.
One major addition appears in Chapter 3, titled “Use of Electric and Radio Wave Equipment,” where Article 30 stipulates that it is “prohibited to set or fix broadcasting reception equipment, including TVs and radios, to channels and frequencies of other countries or hostile broadcasts, or to release the fixed channels and frequencies.”
Since the second half of 2023, North Korea has increasingly used the term “puppet” to describe South Korea, reflecting heightened hostility toward Seoul.
Another clause bans unauthorized communications within the territory of the republic through foreign telecommunications networks, effectively outlawing the clandestine use of Chinese or South Korean mobile networks near border regions.
“The revisions add a lot more detail to the legal framework around the use of radio and electronic equipment,” said 38 North. “This was likely necessary due to the growing use of a diverse range of digital communications devices inside North Korea and the specific issues and challenges faced by the state with the proliferation of those technologies. Gatekeeping information consumed by citizens is vital to the state’s control system and digital communications technologies present new challenges to that regime.”
BY BAE JAE-SUNG [kim.minyoung5@joongang.co.kr]
