Pyongyang, Jan 30 (TruthDive):  North Korean citizens caught using mobile phones or attempting to flee to china during the 100-day mourning period for the late president Kim Jong-Il will be branded as war criminals. They might be punished with life sentence and the repeated offenders might get capital punishment.
 , country’s Worker’s Party issued the warning in an effort to deter citizens from crossing the border and settling in China and South Korea. The reports say that around 23,000 defectors have already settled in South Korea.   The reports also said that food supplies are again dwindling and that there has been an increase in the number of people trying to cross over into China. The country thinks these defectors might turn into a major threat to the current Kim Jong-un regime and country’s stability.
Kim Jong-Il, 69, died on December 17 from a heart attack. His son, Kim Jong-un, took over from him as North Korea’s president.
In November, Reuters reported that 1 million people in North Korea would have cell phones by the end of 2011 and this is “barely four years after people were thrown into prison camps, or possibly even executed, for owning one,” the news source wrote. But, still, 1 million people is just 5 percent of the country’s total population.
It’s unclear how Jong-un will regulate cell phone use once the 100-day mourning period for his father ends.
 North Korea has been identified as the fifth-biggest threat to international stability in the world in 2012 by Eurasia Group, a US-based research and consulting firm. The research said a “lack of information about events” in North Korea and its new leader is a risk that is being “severely underplayed.”
In 2010, there were over 300,000 cell phone users in North Korea, all on a network developed by Egyptian telecommunications firm Orascom. Reuters reported last November that the number has since grown to nearly a million people on the 3G capable network. However the new law is unlikely to affect all as only less than 5% of the poverty-stricken population owns a mobile phone anyway.
Also it is to be noted that this isn’t the first time North Korea has banned cell phone use; in 2008, the government reportedly confiscated mobile phones for the same reason.