Twitter’s Periscope live streaming reaches Pyongyang

It’s probably the first use of Periscope, Twitter’s new video live streaming tool, from Pyongyang.

Coleen Baik, a designer who previously worked at Twitter, is in North Korea at the moment as part of the Women Cross DMZ movement. The group are in the headlines for their plan to cross from North Korea to South Korea at the border in Panmunjom, if both countries allow it. Right now that appears in jeopardy.

She’s been chronically the trip on Twitter, naturally, with photos and live video.

The first Periscope appears to be this one:

And there are several more.

Baik told North Korea Tech that she’s streaming via the Koryolink 3G cellular service and she paid $250 for the basic Koryolink service then $450 for 2GB of data.

“Expensive but actually not as much as I expected,” she said.

Here’s what a dance performance looked like, viewed from a web browser.

A dance performance broadcast live from Pyongyang on Twitter's Periscope (Photo: North Korea Tech)

A dance performance broadcast live from Pyongyang on Twitter’s Periscope (Photo: North Korea Tech)

The ability to live stream from Pyongyang has been available since the Internet arrived several years ago, but with the launch of apps like Periscope and competitor Meerkat, it’s getting much easier.

That raises interesting questions for the guides that escort tourists around the city. Typically, almost everything can be photographed, but sometimes a sensitive image is captured and the traveler is asked to delete it.

With live streaming, the image has already left the country and been broadcast – it’s too late to take it back.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said Coleen Baik was a user interface designer at Twitter. She left Twitter in 2014.

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