KCTV adds computer-generated backdrop to evening news
Mar 13th
North Korea’s state broadcaster, Korea Central Television, has given its evening news a new look. The changes are small, but represent a leap forward in presentation style for the staid broadcaster.
The new look has news readers presenting items in front of a computer-generated background. A graphic to accompany the story appears above the right or left shoulder — a style almost universally used in other countries. When the report begins the graphic moves forward to fill the screen.
Here are a couple of images from the Saturday March 10, 2012, evening’s news, which was the first seen with the changes.
The report 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 >
More Tokyo raids over DPRK PC exports
Mar 1st
Police in Tokyo conducted follow-up raids this week on the office of a North Korean-linked science association as part of an investigation into illegal PC exports.
The Korean Association of Science and Technology in Japan (在日本朝鮮人科学技術協会, 재일본조선인과학기술협회) was raided on Tuesday, according to local media reports.
Police were investigating a possible link between the group and Lee Soon Gi, the 49-year old president of used PC equipment seller Popura Tec (website, right), said the Jiji news agency.
Lee was arrested earlier this month along with two others on suspicion of exporting PCs to North Korea in violation of Japan’s trade sanctions.
The science association was formed in More >
DPRK radio disappears
Feb 24th
Several of North Korea’s external radio services and its powerful jamming operation that blocks foreign broadcasts are having trouble staying on the air.
Voice of Korea, the country’s international radio outlet, was missing from several of its scheduled broadcasts on Thursday, according to monitoring from sites in South Korea, Japan and the U.S.
Two days earlier its English-language broadcast to North America, scheduled from 1500-1554 GMT (1000-1054 Eastern Time) abruptly cut off around 20 minutes into the broadcast and didn’t return. On Thursday the French program left the air five minutes early while in the middle of a song.
All these events are highly More >
North Korea cell phone ban report incorrect, says Orascom
Feb 15th
North Koreans have not been banned from using mobile phones during a mourning period for Kim Jong Il despite a press report to the contrary, according to the majority owner of North Korea’s nationwide cellular network.
The U.K.’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on January 26th that the North Korean government had warned citizens they would be “branded as ‘war criminals’ and punished accordingly” if caught attempting to defect or use mobile phones during a 100-day period of national mourning.
The report was widely picked up by other news outlets, including Forbes, Foreign Policy, Global Post, and Computerworld and made for great headlines (“In N. Korea, use a cellphone and die”), but there 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 >
Pyongyang satellite monitoring station
Feb 12th
In the northern Pyongyang suburb of Hyongjesan there are twelve large satellite dishes on a hillside. The dishes, easily visible in satellite photos, have been there for at least a decade and while their function is unknown, their close proximity to North Korea’s signals intelligence headquarters might be a clue to their purpose.
Some of the dishes have buildings next to them while others are surrounded by trees. Their exact size is difficult to determine, but most appear to be around 16- or 18-meters in diameter. That makes them large enough to receive signals from many satellites in orbit above Asia, but what are 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
Koryolink hits a million subscribers
Feb 3rd
Koryolink, North Korea’s only commercial 3G cell phone network, has signed up its millionth subscriber. The landmark was reached just over three years since service was launched.
Koryolink has been adding more than 100,000 new subscribers for each of the last five quarters and was expected to hit the million mark in early 2012.
The company is operated by Cheo Technology, which is a joint venture between Egypt’s Orascom Telecom Media And Technology Holding (OTMT) and North Korea’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. OTMT holds a 75 percent stake and the North Korean government owns the remaining 25 percent.
Koryolink’s service has popularized cell More >
Japan indicts two over PC exports to North Korea
Feb 2nd
Japanese prosecutors have indicted two people over alleged exports of personal computers to North Korea, Kyodo news agency reported Wednesday.
The two are accused of exporting 8.2 million yen (US$108,000) worth of computers from Japan in violation of the Japanese government’s trade sanctions. Japan has imposed a complete ban on exports to North Korea since June 2009.
The computers were allegedly sent to the Korea Computer Center, the Pyongyang-based computer research center.
An earlier report by Sankei Biz said the computers were shipped in July and December of 2010 under falsified papers that claimed they were heading to Shenyang, China, and Seoul. The shipment contained about More >
