Popular YouTuber breaks silence after fans feared for safety as he exposed North Korea's repressive technology
Topics: News, US News, Phones, Technology
Gerrard Kaonga
Featured Image Credit: X/Mrwhosetheboss
Topics: News, US News, Phones, Technology
A YouTuber has issued a message to his followers after making them anxious when he revealed how North Korean technology works.
North Korea is fascinating for a whole bunch of reasons, most notably how secretive they are as a nation compared to the rest of the world.
While many are aware the government regularly spews propaganda to its citizens, fewer understand how it uses technology and smartphones in its favor to do this.
Popular YouTuber MrWhosetheboss, real name Arun Maini, recently caused a stir after he decided to test ‘North Korea’s illegal smartphones'.
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Arun looked at a Haeyang 701, a budget phone, and the Samtaesung 8, which is said to be North Korea's alternative to the Samsung Galaxy.
Just to get an idea of how petty things are between North Korea and South, Arun pointed out that Samtaesung translates to ‘three huge stars’, a clear put down of South Korea’s ‘three stars’ Samsung name.
He went on to explain that the censorship goes even further when you try to write text on the phone, after putting the words South Korea on one of the phones, it was autocorrected to read 'puppet state'.
If you try writing 'Republic of Korea', that turns straight into asterisks, stopping users from being able to send the word in a message.
On the Samtaesung phone, North Korea gets corrected to 'Joseon', a traditional name for the Korean peninsula named after an ancient kingdom, while South Korea gets corrected to 'South Joseon'.
Arun said that this shows 'just how committed North Korea's government is [in] sustaining its narrative that South Korea is the inferior, less individual country that just blindly follows whatever the US asks them to'.
He also shared that even South Korean slang gets autocorrected on the phones to more formal North Korean words. 'Oppa', a 'common South Korean expression that can be used to either mean older brother or in slang terms boyfriend', gets corrected to 'comrade' - accompanied by the warning 'this word can only be used to describe your siblings'.
Neither phone was equipped to access WiFi.
This resulted in many of his fans taking to social media to admit they were wary for his well-being, something he has finally addressed in a new social media post.
Arun shared a smiling picture of himself and said: “Made it back to the UK safe!!
“Seriously appreciate all the concern, I got pretty spooked myself ngl. Back to tech videos soon.”
A lot of his fans then proceeded to comment their relief hearing he was safe after his trip to North Korea.
One user wrote: “Absolute relief seeing this post seriously glad you're safe and sound Arun. Thank you for the incredible yet high risk content you create. Take care and we'll be ready for the next tech drop.”
Another joked: “Glad you're safe buddy! We almost had to send out Seal Team 6 for an extraction.”
A third added: “YOU HAD US WORRIED AT LEAST COULD'VE TWEETED SOMETHING IN 3 DAYS??!!”
With another commenting: “Thank God that your returned safe n sound! Take some rest and come back to your work soon!”