TV channels North Korea

North Korean television is a fully state-run field: a handful of Pyongyang-based channels carry the country's news, education and sport to the whole country.

How television came to North Korea

Television in the DPRK began in March 1963, when the Pyongyang Broadcasting Station started regular broadcasts - the service that became today's Korean Central Television. The system stayed strictly national and state-run, expanding with an educational channel in 1971 and a dedicated sports channel in 2015.

Every channel answers to the Korean Central Broadcasting Committee, under the supervision of the ruling party's propaganda department. The country used the PAL analogue standard for decades and began digital terrestrial broadcasting in DVB-T2 after trials in 2012; television sets sold domestically are fixed to those systems, which keeps South Korean and Chinese signals out of reach, while Russian broadcasts can be received because they share the same digital standard. A survey in 2017 found that almost every household had a set, and in Pyongyang the channels are also distributed over cable, through the Manbang IPTV service and on state-issued tablet computers. By the mid-2020s all of the channels except Mansudae had moved to widescreen broadcasting.

The channels of Pyongyang

Korean Central Television is the country's flagship channel, carrying news and national programming; it is also the only one sent abroad, by satellite and IPTV. Ryongnamsan Television is the education-oriented service - begun in April 1971 under the name Kaesong and given its present name in September 2012 - broadcasting science documentaries, university lectures and foreign-language courses on weekday evenings. Sports Television covers domestic and international sport, on air since August 2015 with weekend competitions, documentaries and features on the history of sport at home and abroad.

A fourth service, Mansudae Television, has entertained Pyongyang viewers since December 1973 with films, dubbed foreign features, European football and international news on weekend evenings. Across the system, the schedule mixes news bulletins with documentaries on health, history and geography, and weather forecasts that have grown markedly more accurate since 2012. From the reporting of state occasions to the coverage of mass games and championships, the channels of Pyongyang remain the country's only television voices.