A video was posted on the YouTube account of the state-run Radio Pyongyang in which a female announcer reads a strange message with a set of digital codes. Then the video was deleted.
The video called 0100011001-001 is one minute long. The announcer described her text as “an information technology review assignment of the remote education university for No. 719 expedition agents.”
She repeated phrases like “number 23 on page 564, number 19 on page 479, number 20 on page 694.” The video had been viewed more than 5,000 times before being removed from the channel.
난수방송은 숫자ㆍ문자ㆍ단어로 조합한 암호를 특정 상대에게 송신하는 방송입니다. 29일 평양방송의 유튜브 계정에는 ‘0100011001-001’ 제목의 동영상이 올라왔습니다. https://t.co/HYWsJE8nye
— 중앙일보 (@joongangilbo) August 29, 2020
South Korean journalists called it an “encrypted message” for the country’s special agents abroad. It is the first time that North Korea has used the YouTube channel to send messages to its agents, although the radio itself regularly carries out this type of transmissions since the Cold War, according to South Korean media. The last time these broadcasts were on March 7 and 13.
At the same time, in the description of the Pyongyang Broadcast Service’s own YouTube channel, a message with similar content but with different numbers is published.