Martyn Williams
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Homepage: http://www.northkoreatech.org
Posts by Martyn Williams
Orascom CEO meets Kim Jong Il
Jan 24th
The CEO of Egypt’s Orascom Telecom was given a dinner in his honor hosted by Kim Jong Il on Sunday night, KCNA reported on Monday. (Scroll down for updates)
Naguib Sawiris arrived in the North Korean capital on Friday and his meeting with the North Korean leader was the first reported details of his activities.
The report said Kim, “warmly welcomed his DPRK visit taking place at a time when Orascom′s investment is making successful progress in different fields of the DPRK, including telecommunications. He had a cordial talk with him.”
[Read my report at Network World]
A reception with Kim Jong Il is More >
KCNA confirms website, new address
Jan 22nd
Korea Central News Agency confirmed for the first time on Saturday that a recently launched website carrying its news is the agency’s official site.
KCNA news has been available on the Internet for several years via a handful of sites, but all have been run by third parties outside the country.
On Saturday, the agency posted a notice in its daily news mentioning the site:
“The Korean Central News Agency would like to express thanks to all the visitors to its website. The KCNA has the honor to inform the visitors that its website address has been changed: IP address 175.45.176.58.”
North Korea Tech More >
WPK Rules Revision
Jan 22nd
North Korea Tech has been passed a PDF file containing what is claimed to be the revised rules of the Workers’ Party of Korea. The document is entirely in Korean and its veracity cannot be confirmed.
I don’t have the language skills or a close enough knowledge of the political and military workings of North Korea to come close to analyzing the document — but I’m hoping some of the readers of this site do.
VOA News appears to have also been passed the document and is reporting: “Specialists on North Korea, including some in the intelligence community, who have seen the More >
Uriminzokkiri’s Twitter account still down
Jan 22nd
Uriminzokkiri, the China-based website that carries North Korean news to the world, was the center of attention earlier this month when its Twitter and YouTube channels were hacked.
Four Twitter messages and a YouTube video denigrating Kim Jong Il and his son, Kim Jong Un, were posted on Jan. 8, which is reportedly the birthday of the younger Kim.
The YouTube channel was reinstated within a few days and is back to its usual diet state-TV clips and videos produced by the website, which appears to have close ties to Pyongyang.
However, two weeks on from the hacking and Uriminzokkiri appears to still not More >
KCNA switches IP addresses
Jan 21st
The recently-launched website of the Korea Central News Agency has jumped to a new IP address. This move explains some of the downtime the site has suffered in the last few days.
The site can now be accessed at http://175.45.176.58. The DNS records haven’t been updated yet, so the star.edu.kp domain name doesn’t work at time of writing. It still points to the old address.
South Korea’s Internet firewall has also not yet been updated, so the site is currently accessible from South Korea. It had previously been blocked by Seoul.
The North Korean Website List has been updated with this information.
More >
FNK Radio attracts North Korean Internet audience
Jan 18th
Free North Korea Radio, one of the handful of independent broadcasters targeting North Korea, attracted a direct connection to its website from inside the DPRK on Wednesday morning.
The site said an incoming connection from North Korea was recorded between 9:30am and 10am on Wednesday morning. It included the following screenshot (see below) from its site showing a connection from what appears to be within the North Korean IP address range that’s recently been activated by Star JV.
Star’s IP addresses run from 175.45.176.0 to 175.45.179.255.
Free North Korea Radio, based in Seoul and run by defectors from the north, broadcasts programming critical of More >
South Korea steps up blocking of DPRK sites
Jan 14th
South Korea has begun blocking Naenara and several of its sub-sites. The move comes days after the site reactivated its dot-kp North Korean domain name and plugs a long-standing hole in South Korea’s cyber wall against North Korean online propaganda.
The blocking, first reported by Yonhap, results in South Korean Internet users being redirected to the National Police Agency’s warning site (pictured right.)
It has also taken out the Korea Sports Fund’s Faster Korea page, an out-of-date page for the Pyongyang International Trade Fair, and the sites of the Cholsan Patent and Trademark Agency and Koryo PAT Rainbow patent agency.
Naenara is More >
North Korea tops 3G ranking
Jan 12th
The late start of cellular telephony in North Korea has brought the country at least one advantage: it leads the world in 3G adoption.
An impressive 99.9 percent of all subscribers in the country use 3G, placing North Korea number one in the world, telecommunication analyst TeleGeography said on Wednesday.
The solid showing doesn’t really mean North Korea’s cellular network is ahead of the world. In fact, it does more to illustrate how statistics can sometimes provide only half the picture.
While 3G adoption is indeed strong, it’s because most people didn’t have a chance to subscribe to the country’s 2G network.
A small More >
Expansion at Pyongyang TV Tower
Jan 12th
There appears to have been a significant expansion of communications capability at Pyongyang TV tower over the last decade. Analysis of satellite imagery through Google Earth shows big expansion of a neighboring building and the addition of multiple satellite dishes. (See the bottom of this post for updates.)
Here’s what the building looked like on June 3, 2000, which is the earliest image available in Google Earth. To its west two satellite dishes are visible. The TV Tower is just to the east of this building and you can see the top of the tower on the right-hand side of the More >
Dot-KP domain names are back
Jan 11th
North Korea’s Dot-KP domain name system returned to the Internet in the last few days. (See the bottom of this post for updates.)
Offline for months, the service has resumed via servers run by Star JV, the Internet joint venture formed by the North Korean government and Thailand’s Loxley Pacific. As reported previously, dot-kp was run by the KCC Europe operation in Germany but went offline in the third quarter of last year.
Two websites are already available via KP domain names. Both are hosted on the same web server. The first, Naenara, has been available for a few months via an More >
