Something Weird Is Happening In North Korea…And It Could End Very Badly

North Korea is, by all accounts, the most secretive country on Earth. While there have always been tensions between North and South Korea, rising tensions in recent months could have things coming to a head sooner rather than later…especially considering this cryptic new development.

Recent radio surveillance of North Korea has detected a bizarre encrypted signal that has not been broadcast by the regime since 2000, when the North and South Korean governments met formally for the first time.

The signal is a 12-minute sequence of numbers being read by a female voice on Radio Pyongyang. According to local journalists, the message begins with the announcer saying that she is reading homework instructions.

“Page 459, no. 35; page 913, no. 55; page 135, no. 86,” she says over and over again as the broadcast plays.

While the purposes of the cryptic messages are not known, some are speculating that they might be a code to activate North Korean sleeper agents in the South. Others think they might be a form of psychological warfare.

This North Korean “numbers station” is far from the only one out there. Since the Cold War, a few of these mysterious stations have been detected all over the world.

Each of them behaves in a similar way, reading out seemingly random numbers over and over again. We still aren’t sure what purpose they serve.

(via Mysterious Universe)

While it would be a lot more interesting if the broadcast’s purpose was to activate sleeper agents in South Korea, it’s probably just a form of psychological warfare. Either way, it’s not pretty.