In Lumen’s 2024 Smart Phones of North Korea report the Arirang 182 was noted as not having a lot of information currently available about it, so it seemed like a good time to see if we can learn more about the phone.

I recently had an opportunity to acquire the phone which included the complete box and packaging. I put a picture up on twitter when it came in but I’ve had some more time to look over the phone a little more.

According to the side of the box the phone has a 2.4 inch screen with a resolution of 320×240. While the cameras are not great one thing of note is that the side shows that the phone is IP68 rated. This appears to be designed as a rugged phone. This is also shown on the other side of the box which shows that the phone can be dropped from a height of 2m and survive being under water up to a depth of 1.5m.

The front and back of the phone have the Arirang logo. The back also has IP68 on the back of the phone. The two screws on the back plate of the phone are where the battery and SIM card are inserted which seems to be in line with the rugged design of the phone. There is also a texture on the front and side of the phone for easily holding the phone.

I was able to get the phone into English and digging through some of the settings shows some interesting options. Connecting to the internet is not available on the phone even with a SIM card in the phone. There is also a certificate manager in there which assuming would have additional certificates loaded from DPRK when activated in the country.

The box also came with the full set of accessories. The small key is for taking off the back plate to install the battery and SIM card.

While the back camera doesn’t produce the best pictures one interesting thing was transferring photos between the phone and my phone. I was able to share the photo I took over Blutetooth to my phone but trying to share the photo back over Bluetooth resulted in an error each time when I tried to transfer any photo. This seems to be similar to behavior observed on other DPRK Android phones that block outside media.

Cards for tracking repairs

Some interesting notes from inside the manual:

• For questions about the phone and a users subscription they can dial 999
• No warranty on the phone
• Manual calls out specifically sharing vcf files for sharing contacts.