YouTube channel "Pyongyang Broadcast Service - D.P.R. of Korea." Suspicions arose that a video clip on the channel contained a coded message from North Korea to its spies in the South, but the video turned out to be created by a South Korean group. / Captured from YouTube

By Park Han-sol

A YouTube video initially speculated to be an encrypted spy message from North Korea has turned out to be a parody made last year by a South Korean right-wing group.

But it is unknown who posted the one-year-old clip and exactly who is running the YouTube channel that is made to look like it is run by the North.

On the channel "Pyongyang Broadcast Service ― D.P.R. of Korea" allegedly associated with the regime's state radio, a cryptic video titled "0100011001-001" appeared, Saturday.

In the now-deleted clip, which was viewed more than 10,000 times, an audio recording of a female anchor reads a random combination of pages and numbers such as "No. 23 on page 564, No. 19 on page 479, No. 20 on page 694." She then ends the announcement, saying, "This message has been the review assignment for No. 710 agents. This is Pyongyang."

The list was initially thought to be a coded message for North Korean spies in the South, operated like a so-called "numbers station." Since the 1980s, North Korea has broadcasted formatted numbers via state-run Pyongyang Broadcasting Station to provide intelligence to spies across the border. Although Pyongyang's numbers broadcasting officially halted after the inter-Korean summit in 2000, there have been suspicions that it revived the system in 2016.

However, Saturday's video turned out to be a parody uploaded by a South Korean conservative students' group on its own YouTube channel in July 2019, ending speculation that it was an encrypted message from the North. But why "Pyongyang Broadcast Service" posted the clip remains a mystery.

Some experts called into question the claim that "Pyongyang Broadcast Service" YouTube channel is an official state-run outlet.

Researcher Martyn Williams, founder of North Korea Tech that focuses on analyzing the regime's information technology, said on Twitter that the account "is the renamed Choson TV channel" created in 2017 and "appears to be from Mexico."

"Number broadcasts online make no sense. They use radio because it's untraceable. You can't prove or track listeners. Online and immediately there is a log. Plus, why not use PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) or some other encryption instead?" he said.

Unification ministry spokesman Yeo Sang-gi said, Monday, the government does not have detailed information about North Korea's social media channels so it could not confirm whether the channel in question is actually run by the North Korean regime.