priyom.org

Network

The North Korean diplomatic shortwave network follows a forwarding tree structure, as they limit contacts between their stations to hops of usually no more than 5000 kilometers. Pyongyang sits at the root at the tree structure, as ultimate origin or recipient of all messages between it and embassies. Messages from Pyongyang are transmitted and relayed by North Korean embassies across the world, hop by hop along each branch of the distribution tree, until they are received by their final recipients. Messages from embassies are relayed and forwarded back to Pyongyang in the reverse way.

Embassies in the network are typically equipped with an 8-element shortwave LPDA. Stations are identified in two different ways:

  • The address appears as the first byte of each packet in the DPRK-ARQ protocol, and identifies the peer station on the link - the destination of the packets rather than their source.
  • The ID is used in the message headers to identify the origin or recipients of the messages. Historically they already appeared in former DPRK diplomatic transmission formats, prior to the DPRK-ARQ modem.

Station locations can be determined from signal propagation observations, direction-finding and triangulation, the presence and orientation of antennas on embassy buildings, contents of cleartext messages, and identifying information (countries, time zones, phone numbers...) mentioned in cleartext operator chatter.

ID Address Target Upstream station
- 0xD3 MFA Pyongyang -
1 0xA5 Embassy Moscow MFA Pyongyang
2 0xA4 Embassy Warsaw Embassy Moscow
3 0xA6 Embassy Prague Embassy Moscow
4 0xA8 Embassy Bucharest Embassy Moscow
5 ? ?  
6 0xAA Embassy Sofia Embassy Moscow
8 0xAB Embassy Berlin Embassy Moscow
11 0xAD Embassy Stockholm Embassy Moscow
12 ? ? Embassy Kathmandu
15 0xB4 Embassy Vienna Embassy Moscow
16 - Embassy Bern Permanent Mission Geneva
17 0xB3 Embassy Rome Embassy Moscow
20 ? ?  
21 0xB5 Permanent Mission Geneva Embassy Moscow
23 0xBC Embassy Ulaanbaatar MFA Pyongyang
24 0xBD Embassy Hanoi MFA Pyongyang
25 0xBE Embassy Vientiane Embassy Jakarta
26 ? ? Embassy Hanoi
27 ? ? Embassy Jakarta
29 0xC2 Embassy Jakarta MFA Pyongyang
30 0xC3 Embassy Kathmandu MFA Pyongyang
31 0xC4 Embassy New Delhi MFA Pyongyang
32 0xC6 Embassy Islamabad Embassy Kathmandu
33 0xC7 ? Embassy New Delhi
35 0xCA Embassy Tehran Embassy New Delhi
36 0xCC Embassy Damascus  
38 0xC8 Embassy Phnom Penh Embassy Hanoi
40 0xAC Embassy Madrid Embassy Moscow
41 ? ? Embassy Kathmandu
45 0xCD Embassy Cairo Embassy Moscow
46 0xCE Embassy Tripoli  
49 ? ? Embassy Tripoli
50 0xE4 Embassy Yangon Embassy Hanoi
51 0xD6 Embassy Dakar Embassy Madrid
53 0xD2 Embassy Conakry Embassy Madrid
59 0xB1 ? Embassy Addis Ababa
63 0xD4 Embassy Malabo  
66 0xD5 Embassy Kinshasa Embassy Addis Ababa
69 0xD0 Embassy Addis Ababa Embassy Kathmandu
70 0xD1 Embassy Pretoria Embassy Addis Ababa
71 - Embassy Mexico City Embassy Havana
76 0x64 Embassy Luanda Embassy Madrid
78 ? ? Embassy Madrid
79 0xD8 Embassy Havana Embassy Madrid
86 0xDF Embassy Caracas Embassy Havana
91 0xCF Embassy Kuwait City Embassy Damascus
92 ? ?