MrWhoseTheBoss – better known to his family as Arun Maini – is one of, if not the biggest tech YouTube personality in the UK, and now fans are fearing for his safety
Fans of one of the UK’s top tech YouTubers are fearing for his safety after he exposed a closely-guarded North Korean secret. MrWhoseTheBoss – better known to his family as Arun Maini – managed to get hold of two North Korean smart phones, with help from news outlet Daily NK.
The phones – a Haeyang 701 and Samtaesung 8 – don’t exist outside of the country, and virtually nothing was known about them before the Brit got hold of them, much like the country’s first ever gaming cafe.
But in a new video on his channel, filmed in the basement on Daily NK’s office, Maini exposed some of the more mad features both of them have.
Running on outdated Android versions and filled with North Korean-approved software, he found that you couldn’t even the words “South Korea,” as it autocorrects it to “puppet state”. The video also shows how the phones do not have internet, but a North Korean-adapted and approved “Intranet,” giving locals a very curated view of what Dear Leader Kim Jong-un wants them to see.
Options for WiFi don’t seem to work, and there’s an app running in the background called “Red Flag” that seems to constantly take screen shots of what you’re doing to send back to officials in Pyongyang.
Weirdly, there’s also an app containing sports video content . . . including a version of Arsenal’s Amazon Prime documentary All or Nothing, but heavily adapted and with all Amazon branding removed.
Maini hints that there’s no way Amazon has a distribution deal with North Korea – so make of that what you will.
It also became clear that you can’t just download apps on an app store like we can in the UK (or anywhere else), as you have to go to a physical store and fill out forms, in order to get permission for someone else in that store to download them for you.
During the video, he said: “Every part of these devices, from the words you’re allowed to type to the videos you’re allowed to watch, are really designed to reinforce a single narrative – North Korea is superior, and foreign influence is dangerous and everything you do is being watched.”
The video has been watched more than 6.1 million times in just four days, with most of his subscribers expressing their concern over his safety.
One wrote: “Bro is now the top of the most wanted list of North Korea.” Another said: “if he stops uploading we all know the reason.”
A third wrote: “Arun’s next video gonna be titled: ‘So… I moved to an undisclosed bunker .” And a fourth posted: “Ok so if he mysteriously disappears we now know why.”
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