Software
National Program Contest underway in Pyongyang
Oct 29th
The annual National Program Contest began on Thursday in Pyongyang, according to North Korean media reports.
The event, which typically takes place in late October each year, opened at the city’s Three Revolution Exhibition Hall with speeches led by Ro Tu Chol, vice-premier of the DPRK Cabinet.
The contest brings together scientists, programmers and students with more than 1,500 computer software programs, reported KCNA. The software is divided into sixteen categories including operating system and security, artificial intelligence and image processing.
North Korean has been pushing software development for the last decade and the event is one of the biggest exhibitions of developed programs.
A series More >
North Korea’s character set
Sep 6th
A couple of months ago I wrote about the ways North Korean websites show respect to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il by increasing the font size when writing their names. In a reply to that article, a reader mentioned North Korea’s official character set: the country’s official list of Hangul and other characters and how they are coded on a computer.
If you use a computer in more than one language then you’ve probably come across character encodings before. In the past you’d often have to switch a browser to the correct character encoding to get a page to display More >
IPhone app takes users inside North Korea
Jun 30th
Fotopedia North Korea is a new iPhone and iPad app that takes users on a tour of North Korea through the photographs of Eric Lafforgue.
Lafforgue says he visited the DPRK four times between 2008 and 2010 to snap the more than 1,000 images available in the application. The photos cover the culture, sights, scenes, art, people and places of contemporary North Korea
A series of icons runs along the left-hand side of the screen providing access to context for some of the images. For example, click the “info” icon on a picture of Kim Il Sung and you’ll get a text More >
Homefront: Battling North Korean invasion
Feb 12th
The year is 2027 and the Greater Korean Federation, a North Korea-controlled bloc of Asian nations, has been occupying San Francisco for two years. This is the fictional — and many would say unlikely — setting for Homefront, a video game that hits U.S. shelves on March 15.
The game pits the player, a member of the U.S. resistance, against Korean Federation forces in the battle to liberate San Francisco. It’s developed by Kaos Studios, and was written by John Milius, who is best known for Apocalypse Now and Red Dawn.
“Homefront is set ten years after the economic collapse of the More >
2010 National Program Contest
Nov 1st
The 21st National Program Contest was opened on Thursday, according to state media. The annual event is a showcase for the latest computer software developed in the DPRK and sees prizes awarded in several categories.
This year they included 15 areas of research including “system and security, man-made intelligence and processing of Korean language information,” reported the official Korea Central News Agency.
In the past KCNA has typically reported some of the software on display at the exhibition and even named some programs, but this year its report was unfortunately lacking in such details. The closest it got was reporting the display More >
Nosotek’s News Corp. link
Sep 7th
Bloomberg has a well-researched piece on Nosotek, the North Korean computer programming joint-venture that’s been busy developing mobile games.
I spoke to the company back in June when I was writing “The world’s most unusual outsourcing destination” and at the time found a single Nosotek game: Bobby’s Blocks. Bloomberg managed to find several other titles, including some based on the movies “The Big Lebowski” and “Men in Black: Alien Assault.” Through a takeover the games ended up being published by a division of News Corp.
The story also quotes Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies on potential dangers it sees of such More >
Software outsourcing in North Korea
Jun 10th
North Korea has been quietly building up its IT industry and a handful of companies are looking overseas for business.
New Software Developed
Jun 10th
Pyongyang, June 10 (KCNA) — The Samjiyon Information Center under the Korean Computer Centre has of late made new programs.
Full story: KCNA
E-books software developed
Apr 6th
It’s not just tech enthusiasts that are taking their reading digital. North Korea too has developed a digital reader program called “Mirae 2.0,” reports the Korea Times. The newspaper appears to have had a demo of the software, which runs on Windows and allows access to the translated texts of about 1,500 books and 350,000 kinds of other documents, it reported.
Source: “North Korea Has Electronic Books,” Korea Times, and “The e-book revolution hits North Korea,” Christian Science Monitor.
