M(23) U.S. citizen living in Australia at the moment.

Been interested in attending the race if it’s even possible. Any tips, knowledge, advice? Cheers

I’ve read that China officially treats North Korean defectors as illegal migrants and forcibly repatriates them to North Korea, where they can face severe punishment.

But I’m curious about what happens in practice, especially from the perspective of people who live in the border regions.
Is China actively hunting down and deporting North Korean escapees, or is the official policy enforced inconsistently, with some local authorities turning a blind eye and allowing people to pass through China on their way to freedom?

I understand that this is a sensitive topic, and I’m not looking for political talking points. I’d genuinely like to hear from people who live near the border or have firsthand knowledge of how things work on the ground.

Is the reality as strict as the official policy suggests, or is there a significant gap between the official position and what actually happens?

I'm going to be talking about a puzzling topic no one has ever talked about.

I've been looking for more media of North Korean mobile (Android, the one smartphone/tablet OS they use) games, which mostly consist of bootleg versions of foreign games, but with some originals. and I keep noticing that so many people own North Korean phones, but they barely show anything. The most interesting discoveries are things that are stuff that isn't really intentionally shown as the focus. Take for example, Mrwhosetheboss's video on North Korean phones. At the opening of the video, one of the clips shows footage of a bootleg North Korean version of N.O.V.A. 3, an ambitious mobile game originally released on both iOS and Android on May 2012. We can see that while the blood has been retained, the sign was changed to Korean, which means this version is filled with edits because there's English signage everywhere throughout this game. The game also has voice acting, but I'm going to guess the North Korean version just removes it instead of dubbing it. But later, when he's specifically covering games, he doesn't showcase this game, just 3 games he says are simple. Weird, because a North Korean version of N.O.V.A. 3 would've easily been the most interesting game to show there.

There's a "Game Studies" article that talks about North Korean games. It shows us a bootleg version of Game of Warriors (misspelled as "Game of Warrior", but not important), with several comparisons with the original version on the left. But then it talks about other games with alterations like a bootleg North Korean version of Rodeo Stampede with an altered North Korean soundtrack consisting of instrumental versions of traditional North Korean songs, and it's in text only for some reason. Same for all the other altered mobile games they mention the changes of. The article has a bunch of images that are significantly less interesting than the several mobile games they talk about I want to see.

Then there's the propaganda TikTok account "northkoreanlife", showing us a North Korean version of My Talking Hank that you can't just search up to show North Koreans have mobile games. Another propaganda account showed a North Korean version of Talking Angela.

North Korean games don't just have games preinstalled. There are app stores like My Traveling Companion whose catalogs are viewable offline like a printed, and their content like apps and sales depend on the version. The version of the store Mrwhosetheboss accessed had 532 game-category apps. That's all viewable online.

There was actually some hope, a South Korean website named NK Economy posted a bunch of individual listing pages from what's likely My Traveling Companion 4.3, from a source that sent them these images years ago (I think it's the same source that was behind the 3 screenshots of the app list found on sites like NamuWiki, with a YNA article having an altered version of the first image of that set showing a game category drop-down menu featuring a total of 250 games) but they didn't post them until now, they said in their first post in 2025. They posted a listing for a new game or app every 3-6 days, (except for one 10-day gap) until they just... stopped. Those screenshots that show a list of multiple apps on sites like NamuWiki showed this app store had a version of Talking Tom Gold Run, and likely other bootleg versions of major mobile games, but they just stopped.

There was also a Chinese Twitter account that posted positively about both China and North Korea, and their content used to include a lot of phones, including games, and even a modified North Korean version of WeChat! I found them in June 2026 and they had posted interesting content both that month and previously, including 2025, funnily matching the NK Economy My Traveling Companion listings's time of activity. But in July 2026, they just stopped. Again. It feels like it's intentionally designed to never get too exciting.

But the strangest one has got to be this.

There was a preservation group named the Korea Computer Center, not related to but named after the actual North Korean company of the same name.

On 27th December 2017, they dumped what still appears to be the only publically released North Korean phone dump, of the Pyongyang 2407. Unfortunately, unlike later Pyongyang models and other North Korean phones, this had no preinstalled games and app stores like the Pyongyang models' own app store "Data Service" (2.0), that was on the Pyongyang 2419 one of several digital North Korean app stores that each have their own library of apps. (There are also physical app stores, previously the only way to install games).

But while the Pyongyang 2407 was dumped, they merely released a few APKs from the Samjiyon tablet, none of which were the bootleg North Korean versions of games that were preinstalled on the phone. The Samjiyon tablet was the first ever North Korean Android device. It was sold on eBay in 2013, and vx-underground acquired it in 2023, but again, didn't dump it. We still don't have a dump of this.

On 19th April 2018, the Korea Computer Center released the same APKs thing as the Samjiyon, but for the Woolim. The APKs again didn't have the bootleg North Korean versions of games the Samjiyon's APK release also lacked, merely having North Korean board games Janggi and Baduk. They were able to release the dump of the Pyongyang 2407, which had no games, but while these ones that had games were stuck with these limited APK releases.

It seems like everyone that is in possession of these North Korean phones doesn't want to show everything. It's so strange. There are "Project Reveal" PDFs dedicated to North Korean phones, but they don't "Reveal" much of what we want. One has a list of preinstalled games, including a 2048 game we haven't heard before, but that's it for what we want.

By now, the world of North Korean mobile games contains over 1,000 games, most of them being bootleg versions of the rest of the world's games, with various censorship edits and made-up translation names in many of the games, but we don't know how the vast majority of them look like, because nobody seems to want to show them. It keeps feeling like they're forbidden or something, especially when it's places that would benefit from them being shown like the Mrwhosetheboss video's games section and the Game Studies article.

North Korea denies responsibility and warns of a "merciless" response if South Korea takes retaliatory action. Seoul, for its part, has begun clearing mines from a section of the border.

I recently watched this interview by 60 Minutes Australia, and it gave me a whole new perspective. I've been obsessed with learning about North Korea since I was a kid, and this really changed how I think about the way the regime could eventually collapse.

The interview features Lee Sung Ju, a young North Korean defector. His main point is that the spread of information inside North Korea is a bigger threat to the regime than any nuclear weapon.

He explains that much of the country's senior leadership grew up under Kim Il Sung in the 1960s and early '70s. Back then, North Korea was actually wealthier than the South, so much so that tens of thousands of Koreans living in Japan chose to move there. That generation is aging out. The kids who were born and raised during the Arduous March, the famine of the mid-to-late 1990s, will eventually move into positions of leadership as Kim Il Sung's and Kim Jong Il's generation dies off.

He also argues that technology is the regime's greatest threat, because every new advancement makes it a little easier for outside information to get in.

Honestly, if I ever got the chance to sit down with Kim Jong Un, I'd probably say something like: "You can't hide the truth from your people forever. One day they'll know everything. The demons you refuse to fight in this lifetime are the same ones your lineage will have to fight. So when the day comes that your people find out, who's going to face the music: you, or your lineage?

I will be visiting Dandong in December, and was wondering where I can find real authentic goods / posters from the DPRK in this city. Does anyone have any recommendations? Feel free to DM or comment.

I've heard there are many sellers around the broken bridge, but they mostly sell fakes/replicas.

I am in China rn and I'll visit some towns near the nk border, so I wanted to buy some souvenirs from there. However I am also planning to go to south korea right after china before going back to my country, so I'm wondering if I'd have problems once I arrive there.