Internet
Diving into AirKoryo’s new website
Nov 4th
It’s been a couple of weeks since Air Koryo’s new web site make headlines. Much has been written about the site, but not much of substance.
A lot of the stories have noted the airline’s one-star rating on Skytrax, a web site which generates ranking from user reviews, although it should be noted there are plenty of positive reviews on the site. No one’s talking about the booking web site yet so there’s not much to go on, but it does have a couple of technical problems.
The site appears to be running on its own web server in Pyongyang. That’s interesting More >
New! The North Korean YouTube List
Sep 30th
On the right of the home page you’ll find a link to a new resource on North Korea Tech: a listing YouTube channels associated with North Korea.
The first North Korea-related channel came online in 2006 and more have followed. In the last couple of years the posting of videos by Uriminzokkiri, the Pyongyang-linked site based in China, and the government-run KCNA news agency has increased the amount of official video online.
There a four major channels that have attracted the vast majority of views and then a handful of smaller ones.
I’ve also listed four additional channels that provide a more analytical More >
Voice of Korea gets an e-mail address
Sep 19th
Voice of Korea, the DPRK’s international shortwave radio service, has started telling its listeners it has an email address.
The radio station opened a web site more than a year ago but never advertised an email address and continued to ask listeners to send messages via postal mail.
Now it says it is accepting emails at vok@star-co.net.kp, according to Arnulf Piontek in Berlin, who supplied a copy of the letter (below).
It says, “The address will help further developing the friendly relations between our broadcast and listeners.”
I tried sending an email to the address but it bounced back with an error “Unknown address More >
One IP address for all of PUST
Aug 20th
One of the revelations from a recent interview conducted by Reuters with Park Chan-mo, co-founder of the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), is that the entire university connects to the Internet through a single IP address.
IP (Internet Protocol) addresses are the numeric addresses that computers use to route data traffic on the Internet. There are several billion addresses available but North Korea has 1,024 for the entire country — a product of its late arrival on the global computer network.
PUST’s single address doesn’t necessarily mean there is only one computer with Internet access.
Sharing addresses is commonplace worldwide. Most More >
DPRK gets second link to Internet
Apr 8th
North Korea no longer relies on a single foreign telecom company to carry its Internet traffic to and from the rest of the world.
Ever since Star Joint Venture launched the country’s first fully-fledged Internet connection in 2010, North Korean traffic has flowed across the country’s northern border and through an interconnection with China Netcom. China Netcom is one of China’s largest Internet backbone providers.
In the last few days the country’s sole Internet operator has begun using an interconnection with Intelsat, the Washington-based international satellite operator, to offer a second route to its network.
Existence of the link was revealed through analysis More >
Pyongyang News website offers archived TV news
Mar 21st
A website in Japan has begun offering an archive of several days worth of North Korean TV news broadcasts.
[Updated: see below]
The Pyongyang News website appears to be affiliated with a handful of sites operated by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (sometimes known as ‘Chosen Soren’ or ‘Chongryon’) (在日本朝鮮人總聯合會, 재일본 조선인 총련합회).
At time of writing, news bulletins going back to March 2nd are available. That’s longer than the 10 day archive offered by Elufa.net, another Tokyo-based website affiliated with the same group. The programs are received via a feed of North Korean television on the Thaicom satellite.
The new site has bulletins More >
North Korea serves up two new websites
Mar 15th
Two new North Korean-related websites have recently launched and both are associated with food.
The first, from Korea Pyongyang Haedanghwa Foodstuff, appears as a sub-site on the Naenara portal operated by Korea Computer Center (pictured, right). The site is available in Korean, Chinese and English and promotes the company’s
South Korea’s Yonhap News reports the website is “what could be the cash-strapped nation’s latest attempt to diversify its marketing activities to earn hard currency,” but there’s not much to back up that claim. While the site does appear to be the company’s first step onto the Internet, it’s not heavy with sales pitches and there’s More >
DPRK again named “Enemy of Internet”
Mar 13th
North Korea remains high on the list of enemies of the Internet, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said Monday in an annual report on Internet censorship.
The country was listed alongside Bahrain, Belarus Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam as a home to the world’s most repressive online regimes.
The news won’t come as a surprise to anyone that follows North Korea. The country has the world’s harshest restrictions on Internet use and an almost total ban on access. Only a handful of the country’s 24 million people are allowed access, and then it’s only to operate propaganda websites or More >
Is Rodong Sinmun using South Korean news photos without permission?
Feb 13th
Regular readers of The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea’s Workers’ Party, might be forgiven for thinking the newspaper has a correspondent in South Korea. The newspaper, now available in English via its website, offers a page of inter-Korean news complete with photographs of demonstrations happening in Seoul.
But where are they coming from? A little investigating reveals the pictures are mostly cropped versions of photos taken by South Korean news organizations. They aren’t cropped to change the meaning of the image — they’re cropped to remove the logo of the news agency that holds the copyright.
Is the Rodong Sinmun’s More >
North Korea meets Internet rumors
Feb 11th
It’s not often the North Korean authorities have a global Internet rumor to deal with, but that’s what officials in Beijing will be waking up to on Saturday morning. The Chinese and global micro-blogging sphere is alight with rumors that Kim Jong Un was assassinated while visiting his country’s Beijing embassy.
The source of the initial rumors is unclear and the only “proof” being offered is a bad cell phone image of cars – supposedly parked in the embassy car park, and supposedly more than usual. Here’s a look at what happened, collated into a Storify timeline:http://storify.com/martyn_williams/north-korea-meet-internet-rumors
