A North Korean spy tasked with surveilling citizens within the oppressive state has been sentenced to death. Taking advantage of his powers of access, he dared to Google Kim Jong-un. While citizens within North Korea have almost no connection to the internet, an unidentified agent working for Bureau 10, which monitors internal and external communications in the repressive state, has been found guilty of the very act he was instructed to police.
Sources from the capital of Pyongyang told South Korean newspaper Daily NK that the individual was among a number of intelligence officials betrayed to the Ministry of State Security by a colleague.
While the others have reportedly been dismissed from their posts, this agent has been sentenced to death.
Agents of Bureau 10 are usually afforded access to the internet with little concern for their searches, as they are tasked with maintaining the information gap between the world and North Korea.
But a new chief is reported to have taken over the bureau, adopting a stricter approach to what the surveillance agents are allowed to research.
The source told Daily NK: “Bureau 10 departments are given access to the internet, which has allowed agents to turn off their search word recording devices and search the web as much as they like without issue.
“But after a new bureau chief took over, even these previously routine issues have turned into major incidents.”
North Korea is unique in that it is the only place in the world where information on what takes place within the country is practically non-existent.
It exists as a buffer zone between the US-supported South Korea, as well as Japan to the east, and China, with which it shares a border.
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“Despite the regime’s efforts, the North Korean information firewall is slowly, but surely and steadily, crumbling.”
The intelligence officials caught up in the recent purge of Bureau 10 are all understood to have been young, having joined the agency not long after graduating last year.
They were mostly of mid-to-high rank at the organisation, charged with developing programmes for controlling the country’s information firewall, according to Daily NK.
