The Times

The Times: Censorship in China and North Korea

What The Times Is

The Times is a British daily newspaper founded in 1785, making it one of the oldest continuously published newspapers in the world. It is owned by News Corp, the media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch. The Times operates both a print edition and a digital platform (thetimes.co.uk), with a global readership that includes professionals, policymakers, and informed generalists. Its digital subscriber base has grown substantially since the paywall launch in 2010, though exact figures vary by reporting period.

Why It's Censored

The Times faces systematic blocking in China and North Korea, though the mechanisms and stated rationales differ.

In China, The Times is blocked under the framework of content control enforced by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). Chinese authorities do not typically publish explicit censorship lists, but The Times, alongside most Western news outlets, is treated as a source of "illegal" political content. The blocking intensifies around sensitive anniversaries—notably June 4th (Tiananmen Square), Tibet-related events, and Taiwan policy discussions. The Great Firewall's approach is content-agnostic at the blocking layer: the service is inaccessible, period.

In North Korea, the situation is more extreme. Access to external internet is restricted to a tiny elite; the broader population uses Kwangmyong, a domestic intranet. The Times, like nearly all foreign news sources, is effectively impossible for ordinary North Korean citizens to access. The blocking reflects the regime's total information control doctrine rather than reactive censorship of specific articles. Less documented are the exact technical mechanisms employed, though intelligence reports suggest DNS filtering and complete IP blacklisting of foreign news domains.

Technical Blocking Methods

In China, The Times is typically blocked via a combination of DNS poisoning, IP-based filtering, and deep packet inspection (DPI). When a user queries DNS for thetimes.co.uk within China, the query is intercepted and either returns a null response or a spoofed IP address. Simultaneously, the Great Firewall inspects traffic for known IP ranges associated with The Times' infrastructure and drops packets. SNI (Server Name Indication) filtering also blocks HTTPS connections by inspecting the hostname within the TLS handshake before encryption completes.

In North Korea, IP blacklisting is the primary mechanism. The regime maintains allowlists of permitted external domains and blocks everything else at the gateway level. This is less sophisticated than China's multi-layered approach but highly effective because domestic internet penetration is minimal and strictly monitored.

User Workarounds

Users seeking access typically employ encrypted tunneling protocols (VPN, proxy, or obfuscated protocols) to route traffic outside the blocking jurisdiction. In China, however, VPN detection has intensified; authorities use machine learning to identify VPN traffic patterns even when encrypted. Users with technical knowledge sometimes employ less obvious tunneling methods or residential proxy infrastructure that blends with normal traffic patterns. North Korean citizens have virtually no practical workaround; the blocking is enforced by the regime's fundamental control of the network layer.

Alternatives

International news services with lower censorship profiles in these regions include BBC News (also blocked in China but sometimes more resilient than The Times due to technical architecture), Reuters (similarly blocked but regionally mirrored), and Al Jazeera English (blocked in China; inaccessible in North Korea). All three face blocking in China but maintain greater redundancy through mirror sites and alternative IP ranges, making them intermittently accessible.

Outlook

Restrictions in China are tightening, not easing. The CAC has expanded DPI capabilities and accelerated VPN enforcement since 2017. In North Korea, there is no meaningful change; isolation remains policy. Long-term, Western news access in China will likely depend on technical cat-and-mouse dynamics rather than regulatory relaxation.