Are South Korea's Apple Communists Guilty of Treason?

Think What We Tell You To

It may surprise people to learn that some Koreans' sense of 'minjok', or pure-bloodedness, is so weak these days in the corrosive multicultural world in which we live, that they willingly buy Apple products rather than the homemade Seongsan Galaxy phones which have swept the world in the last few years.

But after the revelation that Kim Jong-un - the North Korean hipster now running the secretive regime in Pyongyang – is an avid Apple fanboy, many experts are questioning the similarity between the followers of the technology cult and those who follow the communist dynasty's leadership cult, and asking "Are South Korean Apple users communist sympathizers who are therefore guilty of treason?"

While there may initially appear to be significant differences between Apple and North Korea, there is plenty of evidence of the similarity between the two groups. Both the Democratic People's Republic of Apple and the Workers' Party of Korea were built out of the ashes of near-collapse into organizations which grew to threaten the world under autocratic leaderships known for their sudden rages and summary executions. Both created personality cults and reality distortion fields around their respective leaders, and encouraged a level of fanaticism increasingly aimed at a range of perceived enemies. Both dogmatically demand that the needs of their citizens be provided for exclusively by the regime, with private enterprise and non-approved products crushed.

And while the Workers Party is based in North Korea and Apple is based in California, both regions are known both historically and today for their communist sympathies. In fact, North Korea was an entity which grew out of the Soviet Union, whereas the Apple's founders' emerged from Berkeley – a well-known hotbed of communism and other dubious liberal ideals.

Both the North Korean and Apple regimes claim to be strong to the point of irrational invincibility, with Steve Jobs threatening to wage 'thermonuclear war' in a battle ultimately directed at Seongsan - a company which makes up 30% of the South Korean economy, and Pyongyang threatening thermonuclear war to destroy the other 70%. But experts believe that despite their bellicose rhetoric in reality both the Workers Party and Apple are unable to provide themselves with adequate security. Meanwhile military planners have shown that both North Korea and California could be easily invaded in the event of conflict, despite of the Chinese.

So with all the similarities and the Democratic People's Republic of Apple standing accused of being nothing more than a front for the International Communist Conspiracy while dressing up consumerism as communism, and Kim Jong-un now openly flouting the use of his fellow communists' computers in planning the nuclear destruction of South Korea, serious questions are being raised in legal circles as to whether Apple users in South Korea are open to arrest under the nation's firm but fair National Insecurity Law, which prohibits the possession of communist and other left-wing materials.

The Dokdo Times spoke to a leading expert on the implementation of the National Insecurity Law at a major Korean university, and while he didn't wish to go on the record for fear of prejudicing any ongoing government investigation, and because of the law's rules on free speech, he was clear that South Korean Apple users may be guilty of treason. The professor added that while he always marks the Apple-owning students in his class lower than their non-Apple owning peers, he wants to see the government take a more direct approach to the infiltrators to make them disappear.

The ultimate answer to the seemingly clear question of whether South Korean Apple users are communist sympathizers could have a significant bearing on the fortunes of Seongsan, which recently failed to set audiences alight with its flagship Galaxy S4 launch, despite careful attempts to show how it could be used to make up to 49 percent of the world's population feel superior, rather than the 10 percent globally that typically report feeling superior on using Apple devices.

Until the government acts, the fanboy Kim Jong-un and the North Korean regime will continue to plot the destruction of South Korea on their Apple computers and phones – and people will rightly ask what South Korean so-called 'liberal populists' pro-North sympathizers using these communist tools are doing as they huddle over their iPhones and iPads on this country's peaceful buses and subways, if it is not indeed exactly what it appears to be to the trained eye – a massive conspiracy aimed at overthrowing this country from within.

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Disclaimer: Please note the links above are generated automatically by our software and may not always be directly related to the news article. This article was partly contributed to by the Seongsan Social Research Institute.

Traditional Korean Slap in the Face Under Threat

The traditional method of showing affection in the workplace involving slapping a junior colleague in the face may be under threat after the principal of an elementary school in South Chungchong Province found himself in the middle of a controversy over the friendly gesture.

Problems arose when the principal hit a teacher in his 30s during a dinner organized to welcome him to the elementary school. Recalling the incident, some felt the untested teacher had done little to earn the principal's favor before even beginning his job, but it also raised concerns that the government's ban on alcohol sales in schools last year is leaving teachers sober enough to remember what happened to them at after-school gatherings.

Some colleagues defended their principal however, pointing out that while the new teacher had earned a slap in the face, he hadn't been permitted to kneel before him, a friendly privilege usually reserved for female teachers in their 20s at the school.

The KASA has long argued that 'sexual harassment' in the office - which is sometimes dubiously claimed by a handful of women - is merely a sign that they are recognized by male colleagues for the unique qualities they bring to the workplace. But recently courts have taken a harder line towards the time-honored practice as part of the womanification of Korea which led to the election of the country's first openly-female president last year.

Recently, an inter-Korean slap in the face aimed at President Park in Seoul by the North Korean leadership in Pyongyang was welcomed by liberal progressives as a sign that more food aid should be sent to the impoverished nuclear state as a friendly return gesture, but some conservative elements argued that the slap wasn't hard enough to be taken seriously, and it demonstrated a lack of commitment by the North to building a lasting friendship between the two half-nations.

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Infocon: "North Korean" Hacking Attack Hits Banks, TV Networks

English link?

The computer networks of three television companies, two banks and one Internet service provider were paralyzed yesterday by malicious codes from unknown hackers, probably certainly in North Korea according to unnamed officials.

The attack began at around 1:35 p.m., typically a time of maximum confusion for many media workers as they try to reorient themselves after lunch. The initial wave hit KBS which reported the paralysis of its computer network first to the National Intelligence Service (NIS) at "around 2 p.m." according to the spy agency. MBC and YTN were the next to be affected, followed by networks at the perfectly safe Shinhan, Nonghyup and Jeju Banks. Shinhan Bank said it experienced "interruption" in its Internet and smartphone banking, and automated teller machines. Employees at two insurance arms of Nonghyup reported that files on their hard drives with details of your insurance claims had been erased.

Adding to the confusion, reporters at YTN said they found themselves unable to file news reports when they lost access to the news story application generator on their network, which takes news feeds from other organizations and randomly rewords and reorders the sentences. The Dokdo Times, which now runs on Dokdo Linux – a derivative of K-OS - was not affected by the attack.

Confusion centered around Internet service provider LG Uplus, which was also initially reported to be down. LG Uplus later issued a denial saying its network had not been hacked and was operating normally, but some of its customers questioned how the company would be able to spot the difference.

Reports indicated that when the computers within the TV networks and banks had crashed they could not be restarted, with monitors simply displaying an error message consisting of a black screen with a white skull and two bones in the shape of the letter 'X' beneath it, a Windows message local IT experts said they hadn't previously encountered, but which may indicate an English link to the North Korean attack. It is thought the 'X' may be a reference to Windows XP, the operating system of choice in most Korean organizations.

President Park Geun-hye received the first report about the incident at 2:50 p.m. from the 53-year-old National Security Office (NSO) head Kim, who was first apprised of the situation at 2:10 p.m. There was no immediate explanation for the 40-minute delay, although a number of officials were said to have been testing their ability to withdraw money from the affected banks before informing the president.

"Restore the paralyzed computer networks first, and then figure out the cause and set up measures," President Park was quoted as decisively saying, overruling officials and IT experts whose plan had been to leave the networks unfixed while spending the next month figuring out the cause and going out for beers with their friends. Staff at the companies involved then had to battle their prejudices in order to try to fix the disabled computer networks, which their first instinct had been to either pretend didn't exist, or offer a token amount of money to while still averting their gaze.

The Ministry of National Defense enhanced its "Infocon" level – an alert against cyber terror – by one notch to Level 3. It had already been raised recently to Level 4 after North Korean threats – normally South Korea's Infocon level is 5, although some say it should always inherently be 4 given that 5 – no threat - is deceptive.

An official added that it was still premature to conclude North Korea was responsible for the attack. "We do not rule out the possibility of North Korea being involved, but it's premature to say so" said Defense Ministry spokesman Kim prematurely. Officials privately continued to point the finger at North Korea and stress that the ultimate cause certainly wasn't a random Internet attack based on outdated, unpatched and often pirated Windows operating systems, a generally slack attitude to I.T. security and the use of Korean-made anti-virus and firewall programs such as AhnLab which consistently rate among the worst on the market in the world.

However, experts believe the attack may have initially have succeeded due to failures in firewall products to block the attack. In a 2012 review of anti-virus products the internationally respected AV Comparatives website, commenting on AhnLab's various firewall modes, wrote (PDF) "we were alarmed to discover that none blocked file sharing or Remote Desktop access on our test PC. We are concerned this could could leave a computer open to unauthorised network access, and urge AhnLab to investigate this." It is not clear whether AhnLab heeded the call, and Ahn himself was outside the country at the time following the left-of-center candidate's indecisive run for president last year which created holes in the opposition's defenses and allowed a right-wing president to be elected.

Because of the simultaneous nature of the attack, it is thought that a virus was placed remotely on computers at the various targets, probably by an organized group of North Koreans. "The hacking was not initiated at an individual level. An individual could hack into the network of one institution, but cannot conduct simultaneous attacks as happened" said Professor Kim, the head of the Center for Information Security Technology 404 Not Found at Korea International University, pointing out the well-known fact that individuals are unable to initiate simultaneous actions using computer technology.

An initial forensic investigation has revealed that a previously unknown North Korean group called "Whois" may be responsible for the coordinated attack, as the message "Hack by Whois Team" appeared on some screens. However, attempts to track down "Whois" have been thwarted as the group appears to have cleverly concealed its tracks on the Internet - typing "Whois" into Google simply prompts the searcher to search for something else. Because of the apparent collusion, some politicians are already calling for Google – which has consistently clashed with local authorities for not being Naver - to be thoroughly investigated for aiding the North Korean hackers. Last year Google's executive chairman even visited the home of the cyber terrorists.

According to experts, North Korea's electronic warfare capabilities are second only to Russia and the United States, and are far above the capability of South Korea, which has proven the ability to initiate cyber-attacks but has not perfected a means of launching them outside the country. But as North Korea continues to pose an increasingly serious security threat with its advanced electronic warfare skills, South Korea has been striving to bolster its cyber combat capabilities by upgrading military computers from Windows XP to Windows 7.

The National Intelligence Service will now start a more thorough investigation, but it will be hampered by its inability to access the computers at the organizations which were attacked. "We may have to ask the North Koreans for help with that" said a spokesman for the intelligence agency in an off-the-record briefing.

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Disclaimer: Please note the links above are generated automatically by our software and may not always be directly related to the news article.