North Korea faced a major internet shutdown, a UK-based monitor has reported. The country’s internet went offline on June 07, 2025.
The development was shared by Junade Ali, a researcher who specializes in North Korean internet. He drew a conclusion after finding that the country’s entire internet infrastructure didn’t register on online systems that monitor the internet status and other related activities. However, it’s been suggested that the issue behind the internet outage could be internal instead of a cyberattack.
“A major outage is currently occurring on North Korea’s internet, affecting all routes whether they come in via China or Russia,” Ali said.
“Hard to say if this is intentional or accidental – but seems like this is internal rather than an attack,” he added.
Despite keeping many of its things secret, the Asian country does have some of its websites accessible. Some of these are government websites, including the website of the Foreign Ministry and official news outlets such as the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA). These sites were down on Saturday morning.
Despite the world leaving 4G and transitioning to 5G, North Korea has just started 4G service, while it’s also poorly penetrated in fixed-line internet. It’s reported that much of the country’s internet traffic passes through Chinese servers.
The public uses an intranet called Kwangmyong, but the global internet that most of the world uses is deprived of possibly all North Koreans, barring a few officials in the government.
Though the country’s internet went off the radar, a cyberattack has been ruled out at least so far. But in the recent past, the country has been a victim of a cyberattack. But the country itself is also at the receiving end. A report from Chainalysis said that North Korean hackers hit a record for cyber theft in 2024, stealing worth over $1.34 billion of cryptocurrency.