North Korea is the one country where the question is not whether a VPN works but whether there is an internet to use it on. For ordinary citizens there is not. Their phones and computers connect to Kwangmyong, a national intranet that was estimated in 2014 to hold between 1,000 and 5,500 websites, and Freedom House notes that ordinary smartphone users can reach the state intranet but not the global internet. Unrestricted access is limited to a few dozen families close to the leadership and some foreigners, while a few thousand officials, researchers and students use a closely monitored version.
The country's link to the outside world is small. North Korea announces just 1,024 IP addresses, and almost all of its traffic runs through China; in 2017 the Russian operator TransTelekom added a second connection.
Foreign media is a crime. The Law on Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture, adopted on 4 December 2020, punished watching South Korean films, dramas or music with five to 15 years of labour and distributing them with life imprisonment or death. An amendment in August 2022 changed those to five to ten years, more in serious cases, and life imprisonment. The same law bans foreign-made phones and unauthorised operating systems.
For some foreigners the picture is different. In early 2013 the state mobile operator Koryolink began selling 3G data to foreigners; at launch a SIM card cost 200 dollars and 2 GB of data another 200, according to China's Xinhua news agency. Within weeks it withdrew mobile data from tourists and kept it for foreigners living in Pyongyang, such as diplomats. Anyone using it should assume the connection is watched. GhostShield has no server in North Korea; Osaka, Hong Kong and Singapore are the nearest locations.
International Privacy Standards
Internet freedom varies significantly by country. Organizations like Freedom House track global internet freedom annually, while the EU's GDPR has set new standards for data protection worldwide. Reporters Without Borders monitors press freedom and digital access restrictions globally.
A VPN helps you maintain consistent privacy protections regardless of which country you're browsing from, ensuring your data stays encrypted and your activity stays private.
The privacy landscape in North Korea
Inside the country, the state is the network. Phones run software that blocks unapproved files, and possessing foreign media or a foreign phone is punished under the 2020 law. Nothing a visitor installs changes that for citizens.
Outside the country, the threat runs the other way. North Korean state hackers operate worldwide: the FBI attributed the theft of about 1.5 billion dollars in cryptocurrency from the exchange Bybit in February 2025 to North Korea. People who study the country are frequent targets of phishing, so be careful with unexpected messages and attachments.
For visitors, assume that phones, hotel networks and the data service are monitored.
Top reasons people use a VPN in North Korea
The main readers of this page are researchers, journalists and students who follow North Korea, and travellers planning a visit. For them a VPN matters at home and on the road, not inside the country: on public Wi-Fi, and when working on a subject that attracts state-backed hackers.
Foreigners living in Pyongyang with a Koryolink data plan are already on the global internet; tourists lost mobile data in 2013, weeks after it was introduced. A VPN on that connection would hide which sites you visit from the operator, but nothing public says it is allowed, so check the rules before you try.
Ordinary citizens have no connection a VPN could use.