North Korea has developed a collaborative work platform called Pyongyang Song (meaning “Pyongyang Castle”) that it’s promoting among major organizations. The program enables virtual meetings and document sharing while incorporating security features, and is currently being used for workflow management at various organizations and enterprises.
While analyzing a copy of the Samtaesong 8, a North Korean smartphone, Daily NK discovered phrases like “See you in the Pyongyang Song chatroom,” “Let’s connect via a chat request on Pyongyang Song,” and “Let’s discuss this in detail on Pyongyang Song.” These messages led us to reach out to sources inside North Korea to learn more about the platform.
“Pyongyang Song is designed for organizations and enterprises to send and receive documents, make voice and video calls, and share materials over North Korea’s intranet,” explained a source. “It was a state-backed project developed by a team of engineers on orders from the State Affairs Commission, built to handle multiple simultaneous connections.”
The source compared Pyongyang Song to Russia’s MyOffice word processing software and China’s DingTalk, Alibaba Group’s business collaboration platform.
Pyongyang Song’s key features
Text Chat: Real-time messaging with shared document viewing, discussion capabilities, and text editing functions.
Video Chat: Supports video calls for two or more users, enabling virtual meetings similar to earlier North Korean programs like Taehwawon and Rakwon.
Voice Chat: Voice calls and voice messages over the intranet, with recording and saving capabilities.
Document Transfer: Allows sending and receiving documents on the local network, though likely limited to predetermined file types.
Virtual Meetings: Multi-user virtual meetings with options to share entire screens or display participants in a tile grid format. Multiple meetings can run simultaneously within each department.
Collaborative Editing: Various materials including documents, e-books, and files can be shared and edited collaboratively, with changes appearing in real time.
Government Communications: Features dedicated channels for receiving urgent notices from the central government, administrative orders, and educational materials.
Cloud Storage: Provides storage space for users and organizations, with paid plans offering additional capacity when needed.
Platform capabilities and security
The source told Daily NK that Pyongyang Song functions as a comprehensive online collaboration platform, handling everything from meetings and file sharing to large file transfers.
“The platform can host both simple voice and video conferences and deliver government orders while sharing large video files,” the source noted.
Security is a major focus of the platform. “Meetings can include ‘secure documents’ that participants can view but not record, and classification levels can be set based on meeting priority or connected devices,” the source explained.
The platform also offers real-time material sharing where attached documents can be viewed and revised jointly by meeting participants. Managers can add or remove work orders on documents, official notifications can be delivered, and alerts can be configured within organizations.
Limited rollout
Pyongyang Song remains in a soft launch phase and is currently only used by select key organizations.
“Right now, Pyongyang Song has limited deployment at party, government and legal organizations at both central and regional levels, major companies and research institutes, and universities,” the source said.
“The platform primarily serves development teams working on the next upgrade and organizations testing the communication network in Pyongyang and nationwide,” he added.
Registration isn’t available to individuals—only work units with special government permission can access the platform. The group registration process is reportedly extremely strict and thorough.
“Organizations wanting to use the platform must complete an application and pass multiple clearance levels before receiving final approval from the Ministry of Information Industry under the Cabinet,” the source explained. “After approval, organizations must register unique identifiers for all equipment and terminals that will access the platform and obtain login credentials for their designated manager.”
Clearly, Pyongyang Song isn’t a freely accessible platform but rather a classified system available only to state-authorized organizations. Even approved organizations must navigate a complex application process before gaining restricted access.
Political significance of name
The platform’s name carries political meaning, the source further explained.
“The name ‘Pyongyang’ has political undertones, reflecting that all communications are monitored by the Central Committee, which is the source of party leadership,” the source said. “The word ‘song,’ meaning ‘castle,’ was added to suggest an ‘electronic fortress’ that’s protected from hacking and information leaks.
“The phrase ‘let’s connect on Pyongyang Song’ has become code in North Korea for communicating through secret and secure channels. The platform has naturally become synonymous with secrecy, as users believe that discussions on Pyongyang Song never leak,” he added.
