The Sun

The Sun's Censorship in China and North Korea: Methods and Workarounds

What The Sun Is

The Sun is a daily tabloid newspaper founded in 1964 by IPC Media and currently owned by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corporation. Launched as a broadsheet before becoming a tabloid in 1969, it is the best-selling newspaper in the United Kingdom by circulation. The publication reaches approximately 1.3 million print readers daily and millions more through its digital properties, covering news, politics, sport, and entertainment with an editorial stance broadly aligned with conservative and populist positions.

Why It's Censored

China blocks The Sun under the authority of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). The blocking is part of China's broader internet censorship framework, where foreign news outlets covering politically sensitive topics—including coverage of Hong Kong protests, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan—are systematically restricted. The Sun's reporting on human rights issues and criticism of the Chinese government makes it a target under China's Foreign News Agencies Regulations and the Cyberspace Security Law (2017). Additionally, The Sun's coverage of UK-China relations and geopolitical tensions triggers automated and manual filtering.

North Korea's censorship of The Sun operates under a total information control regime. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea permits minimal foreign media access and blocks virtually all external news sources to prevent "ideological contamination." The regime's State Security Department and Ministry of Culture enforce this through the Korea Computer Center (KCC), the state's primary censorship authority. No legal framework is publicly cited; blocking is enforced through absolute restriction of external connectivity. Ordinary North Korean citizens have no internet access outside government-controlled intranet systems, making The Sun inaccessible regardless of technical method.

Technical Blocking Methods

In China, The Sun is blocked through multiple layered methods. DNS filtering redirects requests to news.thesun.co.uk toward null routes or government-controlled servers. IP-level blocking blacklists the full range of News UK's server infrastructure. Deep packet inspection (DPI) analyzes HTTPS traffic for domain names via Server Name Indication (SNI) leakage, allowing the Great Firewall to block encrypted connections even without decryption. Domain name filtering through the Golden Shield Project catches alternative URLs and mirrors.

In North Korea, blocking is simpler and absolute: the regime allows virtually no external internet routing. All inbound traffic is restricted at the international gateway level, making DNS or IP blocking techniques redundant.

User Workarounds

Users in China seeking to access The Sun typically employ encrypted tunneling protocols that conceal destination domains from DPI inspection. Many use consumer VPN services configured with obfuscation to mask protocol signatures. SSH tunnels and Tor browsing offer alternative routes, though Tor exit nodes are increasingly monitored. Some readers access cached or archived versions through services that bypass real-time filtering, though these are slower and incomplete.

In North Korea, workarounds are negligible for ordinary citizens. Rare exceptions exist for government officials with special access credentials, but public circumvention is functionally impossible.

Alternatives

Readers in censored regions seeking equivalent news may turn to the BBC News website, which is also blocked in China but occasionally accessible through circumvention; The Guardian, similarly restricted in China; or Reuters, which maintains more inconsistent blocking in China but remains partially accessible. All three face varying degrees of censorship in both jurisdictions.

Outlook

China's censorship of foreign news outlets is intensifying rather than easing. The CAC has expanded DPI capabilities and reduced tolerance for circumvention tools since 2020. North Korea's restrictions remain absolute with no indication of change. Long-term access to The Sun in these regions will likely require sustained technical adaptation by users and continued reliance on circumvention methods.