Websites
Kim Il Sung University opens website
Dec 13th
Kim Il Sung University, North Korea’s most prestigious seat of higher learning, has become the first university in the country to launch a website on the global Internet.
The site is available in Korean and English and is being served from a computer in Pyongyang. It joins a handful of other websites that are run by the North Korean government and accessible from outside of the country.
The website of Kim Il Sung University (Photo: North Korea Tech)
The site is available at http://www.ryongnamsan.edu.kp
There’s much of what you would expect on a university website: a history, areas of study, an outline of some of More >
North Korea launches tourist website – although border remains closed
Dec 3rd
A month after foreign visitors are barred because of Ebola fears, dprktoday.com tries to lure tourists with pictures of smiling children and short-range missiles
A welcome given to visitors to DPRK Today, a North Korean tourism website (Photo: North Korea Tech)
By Maeve Shearlaw, The Guardian.
North Korea’s border is still closed because of Ebola, but that hasn’t stopped the country launching a website to promote itself as a destination for foreign tourists.
The site, dprktoday.com, offers an animated tour through the customs and culture available in the so-called hermit kingdom. A short film on the homepage welcomes prospective visitors, provides a handy locator of More >
KCNA imposter website disappears
Nov 27th
A website that on first glance closely resembled that of the state-run Korean Central News Agency, but in fact pointed to news articles critical of the country appears to be been taken offline.
The English-language site was available at www.kcna.co and was modeled on the KCNA website run from Pyongyang at www.kcna.kp.
On Thursday lunchtime (Korean time) the site disappeared to be replaced with an “account suspended” notice.
The message greeting visitors on Thursday morning to a page styled after KCNA (Photo: North Korea Tech)
The site had carried the same logo, same selection of languages and same categories of news as the official home page, although on the fake More >
Kwangmyong has been upgraded, says report
Nov 12th
Kwangmyong information service (Photo: Naenara)
Kwangmyong, North Korea’s online information service, has been upgraded.
The network serves scientific and technological information and has been expanded with a new search function that includes a translation function, according to a recent article on Naenara, the website of Pyongyang’s Korea Computer Center.
The article doesn’t go into great date on what exactly is new, but reports:
“Pak Sun Hyok and other programmers of the Information Technology Department set a goal of developing a function capable of referring to databases in different languages at one click with one Korean question through the automatic question-and-translate function and the immediate translating function More >
South Korea’s Daum launches North Korean mapping service
Aug 30th
Daum has launched a North Korean mapping service, becoming the first South Korean portal to offer maps of the country’s northern neighbor.
The maps are based on data from South Korea’s National Geographic Information Institute (NGII) and, according to local media, provide greater coverage of North Korea than Google Maps.
You can check the maps out for yourself on Daum’s mapping site.
The NGII’s data was previously available to South Korean government agencies and went on sale to the public in mid 2013. NGII offered the map, produced at a 1:25,000 scale, for 17,500 won (US$17).
It covers all of North Korea, detailing towns, roads, railways More >
Pyongyang’s cooking website finally appears
Jul 18th
A North Korean cooking website has appeared on the Internet more than two years after it was first reported to have launched.
The website of the Korean Association of Cooks offers hundreds of recipes in addition to an introduction to restaurants in North Korea and details of the cooking association.
State media first reported on its launch in March 2012 and again in January of 2013 but both times it wasn’t accessible from the Internet. It was assumed to be an internal site on the Kwangmyong nationwide intranet system accessible in libraries and schools.
But this week a site with the same domain “www.cooks.org.kp” name was More >
North Korea’s newest website: Korea National Insurance Corp.
Jun 11th
The Korea National Insurance Corp., North Korea’s state insurance company, has its own website.
The company, which in the past has been accused of orchestrating international insurance fraud, offers basic information about itself and its financial health. While the site appears to be new, the information on it in both English and Korean dates to only 2012.
The official financial information shows a business that’s growing — just be sure to read the chart from right to left — with the amount of premiums and net worth up every year since 2008. But net profits have been sliding in recent years, down 40 percent in More >
North Korea driving instructions come to Google Maps
May 28th
North Korea has strict controls on internal movement, a scarcity of private car ownership and almost no Internet users. And now it’s also got satellite navigation through Google Maps.
The service is available through the web and mobile apps and allows users to calculate travel time by car or foot between points of interest in the Google database. It’s limited to roads that have already been mapped out on the service.
It’s been over a year since Google began adding roads, buildings, railway lines and other data to its map of North Korea. The country had for years appeared as a grey void but that More >
YouTube terminates most popular North Korean channel
Apr 24th
The most popular North Korea-related YouTube channel was deleted by the video website on Wednesday for copyright infringement.
[April 26 update: The channel is now back. Read on for details of how that happened]
The Stimme Koreas channel had amassed around 15 million views for the hundreds of videos it hosted, ranking it above second-placed North Korea Today.
It had attracted more than 12,000 subscribers but today all those subscribers saw was a blank page with a message from YouTube:
“YouTube account stimmekoreas has been terminated because we received multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement from claimants including: DPRKMusicChannel.”
A YouTube message seen on the Stimme Koreas channel More >
Unification Ministry to launch North Korean portal on Monday
Jan 24th
South Korea’s Ministry of Unification will launch on Monday a new web portal focused on North Korea.
The North Korea Information Portal, or NK Info for short, is intended to provide South Koreans with up to date information on the DPRK, the Unification Ministry said.
Information on the site will be divided in several main sections: political, military, economic, social, cultural and education.
Within those sections, subsections will further organize the available data.
For example, within the political category there will be sections covering the main ideology of the DPRK, its political system, its power structure and significant figures and its efforts in diplomacy.
One of More >
