Living on the border of an authoritarian mobility regime: defecting, border hopping, and smuggled smartphones in North Korea

Abstract

This article explores the use of smuggled Chinese smartphones in North Korea as a means of communication that can bypass government-imposed censorship and prohibitions. Adopting the theoretical framework of mobility regimes, we argue these smartphones represent a crack in the authoritarian mobility regime of North Korea and seeks to examine how this mediated practice of resistance interactions with a more traditional mode of resistance, namely defection. Drawing from ten in-depth interviews with North Korean defectors in South Korea, the paper demonstrates that smuggled smartphones and defection work together to reinforce each other and normalize resistance against the North Korean mobility regime. Most importantly, the findings show that the smuggled smartphones affectively assist defection by giving defectors the certainty that they would be able to contact their family even after defecting.