42 North Korean websites inaccessible or unstable, Yonhap reports

As of 3:54 a.m. ET, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026

Forty-two major North Korean websites using the country's .kp domain, including those of the Foreign Ministry, the Korean Central News Agency, Minju Joson and Naenara, were inaccessible or unstable as of 5 p.m. Wednesday Korea time (4 a.m. ET Wednesday), Yonhap News Agency reported.

Yonhap said the access failures at the websites of major media outlets such as Rodong Sinmun and the Korean Central News Agency, and of institutions such as the Foreign Ministry, had continued for a second day. North Korean authorities had not made any announcement about it, the agency reported.

NetBlocks said in a post at 1:56 p.m. ET Wednesday: "Network data show an ongoing disruption to North Korea's already limited internet connectivity. The incident corresponds with the loss of international access to websites under the country's .kp domain."

How the outage unfolded

According to Yonhap, the sites did not load normally for about eight hours, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday Korea time (10 p.m. ET Monday to 6 a.m. ET Tuesday), and were restored around 8 p.m. (7 a.m. ET Tuesday).

About three hours later, around 11 p.m. Tuesday Korea time (10 a.m. ET Tuesday), access failures including service interruptions began again and had not been resolved at the time of Yonhap's report.

The sites either could not be reached at all or, when they connected, cut out every one to two minutes, Yonhap reported. On Wednesday, normal access was confirmed only 11 times, each lasting about 1 to 18 minutes. Access from other countries, including the United States, was also reported to be unstable, the agency said.

What network data show

South Korea's security industry analyzed public routing data and the Domain Name System, which converts domain names into IP addresses, and found an intermittent pattern of recovery and failure on North Korea's internet, Yonhap reported.

The name server for North Korea's top-level domain, .kp, was responding, but the lower-level name servers that handle the addresses of individual sites were still not responding, leaving access unstable, according to the analysis Yonhap cited.

What officials have said

Asked whether any hacking activity targeting North Korean websites had been detected, a government official said, "At present, there is no information to confirm whether it is a cyberattack," according to Yonhap's Korean-language report.

Where things stand

The websites of the Korean Central News Agency and Rodong Sinmun were still not loading as of 3:45 a.m. ET Thursday, when GROKsiNEWS.com checked.

What is not known

The exact cause of the outage has not yet been confirmed, Yonhap reported.