THE world may think of North Korea as a “hermit kingdom”, but its 25m citizens are surprisingly wired. Perhaps half of all urban households now own a Chinese-made “notel”, a portable media player. Over 3m have mobile-phone subscriptions, with Northern-branded smartphones like the Pyongyang and the Arirang. South Korean NGOs that smuggle foreign films and TV shows into the North on USBs receive text messages from their contacts there with requests for specific titles (South Korean soaps and Hollywood dramas are popular).
The North Korean government, which has long relied on isolation to keep its wretched people in servitude, has nonetheless abetted this revolution. In 2008 it invited Orascom, an Egyptian telecoms firm, to develop a 3G network in a joint venture with a state-owned enterprise. There are now many more sanctioned North Korean mobile phones than illegal Chinese ones (which can pick up a signal near the border); many use them to conduct business on the black market, to...Continue reading
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