Why Is North Korea's Internet Down?

We've all been there: Out of nowhere, your Internet connection gets super-shaky, then disappears like a thief in the night. Sometimes it's plaguing your neighborhood, sometimes it's the fault of your roommate watching Netflix — and sometimes, your entire country's internet connection suddenly gets patchy for no good reason. That's what just happened to North Korea, which lost internet connection just days after Obama promised a "proportional" response to the Sony hack by North Korea — which, lest we remind you, was a cyber-attack on a United States corporation. A cyber-attack on North Korea's internet connectivity, hypothetically, isn't exactly on the other end of the spectrum.

Are the two events related? Well, it's unclear. Taken at face value, it might feel like North Korea wants you to think exactly that — we are talking about North Korea here — but according to website North Korea Tech, which is not run by North Korea (all press there is state-controlled), internet outage in North Korea has rapidly spiked over the last few hours. The New York Times' Nicole Perlroth confirmed in a Tweet that "North Korea's Internet access is toast."

The Unites States has suspected North Korea was behind the Sony hack for a while, but only confirmed that North Korean intelligence was behind it late last week. (China disagrees, saying there just isn't enough evidence.) At the time, the White House promised they were taking the cyber-attack seriously and that a "proportional," measured response — in time, the president hinted, rather than a knee-jerk reaction — was being considered.

All this comes in response to The Interview, meaning, believe it or not, Seth Rogan may or may not be behind what's swiftly becoming an international incident. Sony has kept quiet about what its future plans for The Interview are, exactly, but one thing is clear: it sure isn't coming out at the end of December, as was planned. (Obama, for the record, said he believed Sony had done the wrong thing: "I wish they had spoken to me first.")

For the record, North Korea has completely denied that it was behind the hacking. On Sunday and Monday, Kim Jong-un and co made vague but very frightening threats towards the United States, describing an attack on "the whole U.S. mainland." President Obama has been very clear that he doesn't view the cyber-attack as an act of war.

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