14 DAY TRIAL // Fingers in Pyongyang have pointed at the US as the cause for the Internet connection outages North Korea has been experiencing on main sites starting late last week.
In an official statement on December 19, the FBI accused North Korea of direct involvement in the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment. Soon after, President Obama said at a press conference that the US would react against North Korea for this, at an undisclosed point in time.
The US denies involvement
Coincidence or not, the next day the Hermit Kingdom was impacted by an Internet outage and, just as the FBI rushed to what many call the wrong conclusion, North Korea now believes that the downtime was an attack from the US.
Technical problems could also be the cause of the trouble, but Pyongyang did not comment on this possible reason.
As it was expected, US officials have denied any implication as far as this affair is concerned, according to Reuters, just as North Korea denied involvement, both officially and unofficially, in the Sony hack.
However, North Korea has no proof, or at least it has not provided any, that the outage was an operation carried out by Washington.
On the other hand, it has been circulated in the media that local sources claimed that both the US and China worked to bring down the Internet in North Korea.
“The Interview” fueled the conflict, Internet issues continue
This declaration war has intensified since Sony announced they would release a comedy called “The Interview,” where two reporters get to meet North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and are tasked by the CIA to assassinate him.
North Korea filed a complaint with the United Nations, calling the movie “an act of war,” accusing the US that it would be fully responsible for encouraging and sponsoring terrorism, if the comedy reaches its audience.
On November 24, a group of hackers triggered an attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, which resulted in the studio announcing that it would cancel the release of the movie.
At the beginning, the hackers claimed monetary compensation for highly confidential data stolen from Sony computers, but subsequent communication, allegedly from them, revealed another purpose: burying “The Interview” altogether.
Terrorist threats were made, and the consequence was that many cinemas refused to run the movie.
It appears that it was all a hoax, as the Department of Homeland Security said that there was no credibility to the threats, and Sony released the movie on schedule, not only in cinemas, but also via online services.
At the moment, it seems that the Internet in North Korea and some 3G mobile phone networks are again suffering, according to NPR. This comes after signs that connectivity in the country was beginning to come to a normal state.
