North Korean authorities are forcibly removing mobile phones from the people and disabling Bluetooth, Radio Free Asia (RFA) has claimed.





Bluetooth allows for data to be exchanged over short distances via connected devices; a function the North Korean authorities fear will facilitate the spread of illegal foreign content.





A Pyongyang source who recently traveled to China alleged, “Some time ago, security authorities forcibly gathered the people’s hand-held phones and only returned them once the inbuilt Bluetooth capability was disabled.”





“Students often use Bluetooth to share pictures, ringtones and music. It seems a big fuss emerged out of concerns that impure information from the outside would spread in the process,” a second source from South Hamkyung Province explained.





“It’s expected that mobile phones available for purchase in future will not have Bluetooth at all. In other countries, new functions are developed all the time, and new models come out every day. But they live in backward times in Chosun.”