Television in North Korea is subject to the Korean Central Broadcasting Committee and controlled by the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers' Party of Korea. [1] A study in 2017 found that 98% of households had a television set. [2] As of 2020, there are over-the-air broadcasts in both analogue and recently launched digital formats. [3]
Television in North Korea uses a PAL 576i Systems D and K analog signal transmission system and 4:3 aspect ratio. Before 1993, North Korea was operating on the SECAM television system, which also uses 576i at 4:3. [4] The four major television channels—Korean Central Television, Mansudae, Athletic Television and Ryongnamsan—broadcast over the air, as well as on a cable television system in Pyongyang; [5] these channels are also available in a special app found on the government issued Samjiyon tablet computers, [6] as well as on the Manbang IPTV service.
North Korea uses DVB-T2 for Digital Terrestrial Television. Trials began in 2012. [7] [8] As of 2020, multiple set-top box models were available, giving access to the four broadcast channels. [3]
Television sets sold in North Korea are able to operate only on the PAL and DVB-T2 systems, to prevent them from being able to pick up broadcasts from South Korea (which use NTSC System M analogue and ATSC digital) or China (which uses DTMB digital). However, broadcasts from Russia can be picked up, as they are also DVB-T2. Imported TV sets that are able to operate on both PAL and NTSC, such as those from Japan, have their NTSC abilities disabled by the government on import. [9]
As of August 16, 2016, there were four television channels in North Korea. All are state-owned and usually last from daytime to prime time.
| External videos | |
|---|---|
| Korean Central Television | |
 "Development of Television under Kim Jong Il"; excerpt from North Korean television on the development of KCTV in the 1980s and 1990s |
This is the oldest and main television channel in North Korea, and it started regular broadcasting in 1963. As of 2017, it is the only North Korean TV channel broadcasting to the outside world via satellite television and IPTV aside from domestic transmissions. On satellite, KCTV is available in standard definition as well as in Full HD. [10] Since December 4, 2017, a test air broadcast in the format 16:9 SDTV was started. [11]
Mansudae Television broadcasts educational material with the occasional advert on weekends [12] to Pyongyang. It opened on December 1, 1973. The Mansudae TV Broadcasting Station broadcasts three hours (19:00–22:00) on Saturdays, and nine hours (10:00–13:00, 16:00–22:00) on Sundays. [13]
Ryongnamsan Television (룡남산텔레비죤) is an educational channel provided by University Student TV Department of Korea Radio and Television. [14] The de facto director of this channel is Yang Chun Won.
The channel started broadcasting on April 1, 1971, under the name "Kaesong". On October 10, 1991, that channel transitioned to color broadcasting. On 1 February 1997 (some sources say 16 February 1997), the channel was rebranded as the "Korean Educational and Cultural Network". [15] According to the North Korea Handbook, the rebranding was connected with the 55th anniversary of Kim Jong-il.[ not specific enough to verify ] The channel was broadcast on Channel 9 in Pyongyang from 18:00 to 22:00 on weekdays. [3] Also in the 1990s, the television station carried out experimental broadcasting from the television tower in Kaesong on Channel 8 in the NTSC-M format, as a way to promote North Korean culture among South Korean viewers. Channel 8 was chosen to prevent the signal from being jammed by South Korean broadcasters, since in Seoul, Channels 7 and 9 were used for KBS2 and KBS1 until that country's analogue shutdown on December 31, 2012. KBS1 and KBS2 were also broadcast in the demilitarized zone on Channels 29 and 28, respectively, although their signal was jammed by the North Korean government.
On September 5, 2012, the channel received its current name. [16] Its schedule includes science documentaries in English, television lectures and educational programs for learning foreign languages. [14] The channel is available for viewing to students of all universities of Pyongyang. The station broadcasts on Channel 9 from the Pyongyang TV tower, on the Manbang IPTV service, [17] and on apps on Samjiyon tablets.
| External media | |
|---|---|
| Ryongnamsan Television | |
| Images | |
 Screenshot of 4:3 testcard | |
| Screenshot of 16:9 testcard | |
| Video | |
| Video recording of Ryongnamsan TV testcard with background music |
| External image | |
|---|---|
| The DPRK Sport Television | |
| The Sport Television testcards (4:3 on center and fragment of 16:9 on the right) |
Athletic Television (Cheyug TV, 체육텔레비죤) is the sports channel launched on August 15, 2015. [18] Athletic Television presents sports competitions involving North Korean athletes, and documentaries and programs about the history of sports in North Korea and the world. [19] [20] The channel broadcasts on Saturdays and Sundays from 19:00 to 22:00. At 20:00, the channel broadcasts the Podo news program by Korean Central Television.[ citation needed ]
Frequency plan of Pyongyang TV Tower (2015) [6] and the Manbang IPTV channels (2016). The VHF channels utilize System D and the UHF frequencies are System K.
| Frequency channel | Manbang IPTV system | TV channel | Transmitter power (kW) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 (93.25 MHz)[ citation needed ] | 2 | Mansudae Television | 350 |
| 6 (175.25 MHz)[ citation needed ] | 4 | Athletic Television | 250 |
| 9 (199.25 MHz) | 3 | Ryongnamsan | 140 |
| 12 (223.25 MHz) | 1 | Korean Central Television | 700 |
| 25 (503.25 MHz) | - | (planned) | |
| 31 (551.25 MHz) | - | (planned) |
The quality of programming has improved over the years. International news is broadcast and the quality of educational programming is high. Documentaries are aired often and are usually on the topic of health, Korean and world history and geography. [21] Since 2012, weather forecasting has become more accurate and timely responding to climate change concerns and the economic impact of weather events. [22]
Telecommunications in North Korea refers to the communication services available in North Korea. North Korea has not fully adopted mainstream Internet technology due to some restrictions on foreign interventions.
Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analog television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields per second, and associated with CCIR analogue broadcast television systems B, D, G, H, I or K. The articles on analog broadcast television systems further describe frame rates, image resolution, and audio modulation.
Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in February, 1998. This system transmits compressed digital audio, digital video and other data in an MPEG transport stream, using coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing modulation. It is also the format widely used worldwide for Electronic News Gathering for transmission of video and audio from a mobile newsgathering vehicle to a central receive point. It is also used in the US by Amateur television operators.
Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards are an International set of standards for broadcast and digital television transmission over terrestrial, cable and satellite networks. It is largely a replacement for the analog NTSC standard and, like that standard, is used mostly in the United States, Mexico, Canada, South Korea and Trinidad & Tobago. Several former NTSC users, such as Japan, have not used ATSC during their digital television transition, because they adopted other systems such as ISDB developed by Japan, and DVB developed in Europe, for example.
The music of North Korea includes a wide array of folk, hip-hop, light instrumental, political, and classical performers. Beyond patriotic and political music, popular groups like Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble and Moranbong Band perform songs about everyday life in the DPRK and modern light pop reinterpretations of classic Korean folk music. Music education is widely taught in schools, with President Kim Il Sung first implementing a program of study of musical instruments in 1949 at an orphanage in Mangyongdae. Musical diplomacy also continues to be relevant to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, with musical and cultural delegations completing concerts in China and France in recent years, and musicians from Western countries and South Korea collaborating on projects in the DPRK.
Digital terrestrial television is a technology for terrestrial television where television stations broadcast television content in a digital format. DTTV is a major technological advance over analog television, and has largely replaced analog television broadcast, which had been in common use since the middle of the 20th century. Test broadcasts began in 1998 with the changeover to DTTV, also known as the Analog Switchoff (ASO) or Digital Switchover (DSO), which began in 2006 and is now complete in many countries. The advantages of digital terrestrial television are similar to those obtained by digitizing platforms such as cable TV, satellite, and telecommunications: more efficient use of radio spectrum bandwidth, provision of more television channels than analog, better quality images, and potentially lower operating costs for broadcasters.
Television in Hungary was introduced in 1957. Transmission in colour was introduced to Hungarian television for the first time in 1971. Hungary had only one television channel until 1973. It was only in the mid 1990s when private and commercial broadcasting was introduced to Hungary.
The mass media in North Korea is amongst the most strictly controlled in the world. The constitution nominally provides for freedom of speech and the press. However, the government routinely disregards these rights, and seeks to mold information at its source. A typical example of this was the death of Kim Jong Il, news of which was not divulged until two days after it occurred. Kim Jong Un, who replaced his father as the leader, has largely followed in the footsteps of both his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, and his father. However, new technologies are being made more freely available in the country. State-run media outlets are setting up websites, while mobile phone ownership in the country has escalated rapidly. "There is no country which monopolizes and controls successfully the internet and information as North Korea does," said Kang Shin-sam, an expert on North Korean technology and co-head of the International Solidarity for Freedom of Information in North Korea, a nonprofit based in South Korea. North Korea has about four million mobile-phone subscribers circa 2022—roughly one-sixth of the population and four times the number in 2012, according to an estimate by Kim Yon-ho, a senior researcher at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
A digital television adapter (DTA), commonly known as a converter box or decoder box, is a television tuner that receives a digital television (DTV) transmission, and converts the digital signal into an analog signal that can be received and displayed on an analog television set. Some also have an HDMI output since some TVs with HDMI do not have a digital tuner. The input digital signal may be over-the-air terrestrial television signals received by a television antenna, or signals from a digital cable system. It normally does not refer to satellite TV, which has always required a set-top box either to operate the big satellite dish, or to be the integrated receiver/decoder (IRD) in the case of direct-broadcast satellites (DBS).
DVB-T2 is an abbreviation for "Digital Video Broadcasting – Second Generation Terrestrial"; it is the extension of the television standard DVB-T, issued by the consortium DVB, devised for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television. DVB has been standardized by ETSI.
Television in Iceland is currently composed of the public broadcasting service of RÚV, five free-to-view channels and a number of subscription channels provided by private broadcasters. Broadcasts began in 1955 when the American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) started an English-language television service broadcasting from Naval Air Station Keflavik, which operated until 2006. The first Icelandic-language television broadcasts started in September 1966 with the launch of RÚV, originally called Sjónvarpið. In 1986 the first privately owned TV station, Stöð 2, began broadcasts. In recent years the emergence of foreign internet streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+ has seen shift from domestic providers provide similar on demand streaming services such as Síminn Premium and Stöð 2+.
The digital television transition, also called the digital switchover (DSO), the analogue switch/sign-off (ASO), the digital migration, or the analogue shutdown, is the process in which older analogue television broadcasting technology is converted to and replaced by digital television. Conducted by individual nations on different schedules, this primarily involves the conversion of analogue terrestrial television broadcasting infrastructure to digital terrestrial (DTT), a major benefit being extra frequencies on the radio spectrum and lower broadcasting costs, as well as improved viewing qualities for consumers.
Television in Croatia was first introduced in 1956. As of 2012, there are 10 nationwide and 21 regional DVB-T television channels, and there are more than 30 other channels either produced in the Republic of Croatia or produced for the Croatian market and broadcast via IPTV, cable, or satellite television. The electronic communications market in Croatia is regulated by the Croatian Regulatory Authority for Network Industries (HAKOM), which issues broadcast licenses and monitors the market. The DVB-T and satellite transmission infrastructure is developed and maintained by the state-owned company Odašiljači i veze (OiV).
Korean Central Television is a North Korean television service operated by the Korean Central Broadcasting Committee, a state-owned broadcaster in North Korea. It is broadcast terrestrially via the Pyongyang TV Tower in Moranbong-guyok, Pyongyang, streamed via the government-run internet television service Manbang, and also uplinked via satellite.
Mansudae Television is a state-owned entertainment television channel based in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It broadcasts movies, selected foreign films and entertainment programming every weekend with occasional advertising. Mansudae began transmissions on December 1, 1973, and broadcasts for three hours (19:00–22:00) on Saturdays, and nine hours on Sundays.
Manbang (Korean: 만방) is a series of state-owned digital media players issued by North Korea's Korean Central Broadcasting Committee, providing over-the-top content in the form of channels. It was created in response to streaming platforms like Netflix and Roku in the west, and the popularity of Chinese-made Notel players in North Korea.
Ryongnamsan Television is a North Korean educational television channel operated by the University Student TV Department of the Korean Central Broadcasting Committee. The channel schedule includes science documentaries in English, television lectures and educational programs for learning foreign languages including in English, Russian and Chinese.
Broadcasting
Russian : Вопреки расхожему мнению, в Пхеньяне, по крайней мере, люди смотрят не один канал в рабочие дни и два - по выходным. В гостях, где мы были, есть кабельное ТВ и при нас каналов было четыре.
