North Korea 'aggressively' jamming BBC's new Korean-language service
The BBC's new Korean-language service is being "aggressively targeted" by North Korean jamming of its broadcasts.
The service was launched on Monday and delivers a mixture of global news, sport and radio features to the whole of the Korean Peninsula for a three-hour window that starts at midnight local time.
Broadcasts are going out on two shortwave frequencies, from Taiwan and Tashkent, while the hour-long segment from 1am is relayed on medium wave from Mongolia, according to a report on the 38 North web site, operated by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
"As listening to foreign radio is illegal, the government makes a great effort to prevent people from doing so", the report states. "At the most basic level, it modifies radios so they cannot be tuned to anything but state-run channels, although that can be later reverse engineered.
"A much bigger problem is radio jamming, where loud noise is deliberately broadcast over a foreign station to make it difficult or impossible to listen to.
"On the first evening of broadcasts to North Korea, both BBC shortwave channels were aggressively targeted", it added.
It was not clear whether the medium wave channel was also subject to jamming.
North Korea routinely blocks radio transmissions by outside broadcasters - including Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and South Korea's KBS - so its citizens remain in the dark about political freedoms and standards of living in other parts of the world.
The regime also harshly punishes anyone caught using a mobile phone to communicate outside the country or citizens caught with foreign programmes on CDs or memory sticks.
Many defectors who have managed to reach South Korea cite their exposure to information on the outside world as a major factor behind their decision to leave the North and there are several groups in the South that use balloons to send shortwave radios and programmes on media devices into the North.
Some believe that access to information will be the catalyst that finally topples the regime of Kim Jong-un, which is why the authorities are cracking down so fiercely.
The BBC broadcasts are going out after midnight, which will make it easier for listeners with access to short wave to tune in secretly. (The Telegraph)
