Featured Image Credit: Mrwhosetheboss / YouTuber
While America is protected by the First Amendment in terms of free speech, count yourself lucky that you don't live in many of the dictatorial regimes around the world. Even though some of you might be moaning that government officials are clamping down on the kinds of pornography we view online, that's nothing compared to the likes of China, Iran, and North Korea, where everything you view online is tightly controlled or even outright banned.
We previously covered the YouTuber who was shocked by what he saw when he tried to run a marathon in North Korea, or what about trying to access its notoriously restricted internet?
Earlier in 2025, there was an investigation into a smartphone that was smuggled out of North Korea. The BBC found that the custom-built model was there to spy on users, silently taking screenshots every five minutes and storing them in a hidden folder.
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Now, Arun "Mrwhosetheboss" Maini has shared a video where he's somehow managed to get his hands on two smartphones that were smuggled out of North Korea. Saying that the country's population is so cut off from the outside world, it's hard to even get a text out, let alone two functioning phones.
Sat in the basement of Daily NK, Maini showed off the Haeyang 701. He says the device is so mysterious that Googling it will come up with no results. The other phone was the Samtaesung 8, which is effectively North Korea's 'superior' answer to South Korea's Samsung. Speaking of the neighbor company, typing 'South Korea' in the Samtaesung will autocorrect to 'Puppet State'. Others like 'Republic of Korea' will simply be replaced by a series of asterisks.
Notably, neither phone allows you to access the internet, showing just how controlled things are over there. There is North Korea's own 'version' of the internet, which is called Mirae and requires a slew of details like your government ID and an authenticated North Korean SIM card.
Mrwhosetheboss notes it's nothing like an actual internet, and instead, is a "highly curated North Korean intranet where you can look at specifically government-approved TV news propaganda and apps."
If this wasn't enough, the Samtaesung 8 is considered one of the country's modern flagship phones and costs around the equivalent of $1,000 despite you being constantly monitored and the whole thing feeling 'dated'.
Maini goes on to spectacularly claim that its closeness to a 2021 Huawei phone, and the fact that it was seemingly manufactured in China, means Huawei could be supplying phones to North Korea.
In the comments, many were concerned for Mrwhosetheboss as he attempted to show this secretive side of North Korea.
One person lamented: "If he stops uploading we all know the reason ☠️💀."
The top comment read: "He will be now Mrwhereistheboss."
A third concluded: "You just know that North Korea is going to take this video, add their own voice-over, edit it, and show it to their people as 'proof' of how amazing their phone is and that the entire world is using it. 😂."
Mrwhosetheboss reminds us that it's not exactly a competitive market, with the North Korean government under no obligation to supply its citizens with any kind of cutting-edge technology.
Still, if you want a phone that has a movie app that refuses to show films from America or South Korea, maybe consider getting yourself a North Korean phone.
