Inside North Korea, every piece of technology is built for surveillance and control. This is Red Star OS, the regime’s custom operating system that secretly embeds metadata watermarks into files, allowing authorities to trace them back to the original computer. The control doesn’t stop there. North Korean smartphones are heavily restricted, the country operates its own isolated intranet called Kwangmyong filled with state propaganda, and software like “Red Flag” reportedly captures screenshots from devices every few minutes for security monitoring. In North Korea, being caught with outside media can lead to prison camps, forced labor, or even execution. Yet, resistance is still happening. Activists and defectors are risking everything to smuggle flash drives packed with Western news, K-dramas, movies, and glimpses of normal life into the country through drones, balloons, and even bottles sent across rivers. One USB drive can spread from person to person, reaching entire communities. More than 130,000 drives have already been distributed. In a place where even watching a BTS video can be treated as a crime, a tiny flash drive becomes a portal to the rest of the world. #ViceNews #NorthKorea #SurveillanceState #RedStarOS #Kwangmyong #DigitalDictatorship #HumanRights #NorthKoreanDefectors #Propaganda #InternetFreedom #KimJongUn #FlashDrivesForFreedom #TechAndFreedom Subscribe to VICE News here: http://bit.ly/Subscribe-to-VICE-News Check out VICE News for more: http://vicenews.com Follow VICE News here: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@vicenews?lang=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vicenews Twitter: https://twitter.com/vicenews Instagram: http://instagram.com/vicenews ============================ Chapters: 00:00 Red Star OS: North Korea's Surveillance System 01:33 Cheap Smartphones Smuggled from China 02:51 Kwangmyong: North Korea's Intranet 03:49 Red Flag Spyware and the Price of Dissent 04:44 Flash Drives for Freedom 05:58 Smuggling Flash Drives by Drone Balloon and Rice Bottles Inside North Korea’s Closed Digital World | Proton Data Wars | VICE News https://www.youtube.com/@VICENews