When he wasn’t taking stunning panorama photographs around Pyongyang, Singapore-based photographer Aram Pan had time to visit this year’s Pyongyang Spring International Trade Fair (평양봄철국제상품전람회). The fair was twice as big this year as it had been in 2013 according to state media, and it’s easy to see why when you watch a 3-minute video shot by Pan. The…

 

Almost 70 companies publicly traded on U.S. stock markets have found North Korean gold in their manufacturing supply chains. Among the more prominent names are electronics companies IBM, HP, Garmin, Philips and Seagate, U.S. kitchenware retailer Willams Sonoma. The discoveries were disclosed in reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that are the result of a new…

 

Will Scott, a computer scientist from Washington state, just returned from several months as a guest lecturer at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). In an interview with North Korea Tech and in posts on Reddit, Scott spoke about what it’s like to be at PUST. This is part two of a three-part…

 

Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) is one of the more ambitious international ventures in North Korea of the last few years. Almost ten years in planning, PUST is the country’s first privately-run university and backed with funds from evangelical Christian organizations in the U.S. and overseas. It currently has several hundred students and…

 

 

 

One of the surprises in North Korea’s recently-launched Samjiyon (삼지연) tablet was the inclusion of Angry Birds, the globally-popular game that involves shooting animated birds to destroy structures and animated pigs. In July, when I was reviewing the Samjiyon, I contacted game-maker Rovio to ask about its inclusion in the device. Despite several attempts to get comment,…

 

A model of North Korea’s Samjiyon (삼지연) tablet is up for sale on Ebay. It appeared on the morning on Thursday, November 7, and appears to have been listed by a Canadian account with a shipping location of Yanji in China. Yanji sits just across the border from North Korea. Its appearance followed a second-round of…

 

The second of Pyongyang’s two annual international trade fairs opened on Monday. The Pyongyang Autumn International Trade Fair is scheduled to run until Thursday and has attracted companies from Germany, Russia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, Italy, China, Cuba, Turkey and Taiwan, according to the Korean Central News Agency. In previous years, the fair has been the launching…

 

One of the most interesting questions surrounding North Korea’s Samjiyon tablet is its source. State media reports not withstanding, the tablet is almost certainly not made in North Korea — the country just doesn’t have the electronics manufacturing capability to design products like tablet computers from the components up. And anyway, why bother? Companies in Taiwan…