A coded message from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

it _seems_ to be someone's "open-source intelligence" documentation of NK comms; numbers stations and other secret communications. There also seems to be some propaganda mixed in, with the implication it's also somehow tradecraft.

North Korea supposedly still uses numbers stations to contact infiltrators. Though, they may just keep the stations as a way to ratchet up tensions with South Korea, given that numbers stations are a bit anachronistic. Who knows! It's interesting though.

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200829002300315

https://world.kbs.co.kr/service/news_view.htm?lang=e&Seq_Cod...

They've done it before as well (better source + more detail, but less current):

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/world/asia/north-korea-sp...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station

I, like others on HN, am confused as to what this is, but you seem excited about it. Would you care to explain what this information represents? Is it a puzzle? Is it a leak from NK?

What's the relevance of a book, an index of some server with music, and how does it all tie to disinformation campaign mentioned at the top of the readme?

I haven't parsed it fully but it looks like an attempt to annotate north korean tradecraft?

Numbers stations do exist (not legally but still), but keep in mind that these days you could just leave comments on hackernews aligning with words in a book (as your OTP), for example.

Numbers stations are real and are very simple. Back in the day all major spy agencies would operate them.

Simple but effective. You can send coded messages via radio waves, to receive them you only need a radio. You can send them from your country so enemy state(s) cannot stop you from doing it short of invasion/sabotage.

If spies are using none reused one time codebook its impossible to decode message without the codebook.

Because of its nature you cannot really catch anyone receiving signal.

The only downside is that its one way communication and if somehow spy gets caught than their codebook can be used for decoding of the messages (but each spy would have unique book). So even that could have small fallout.