Slashdot Mirror
The Internet Black Hole That Is North Korea
Nrbelex writes "While other restrictive regimes have sought to find ways to limit the Internet — through filters and blocks and threats — North Korea has chosen to stay wholly off the grid. The New York Times discusses the total lack of 'net access facing the North Korean state, and what it means in the long term." From the article: "The South was illuminated from coast to coast, suggesting that not just lights, but that other, arguably more bedrock utility of the modern age -- information -- was pulsating through the population. The North was black. This is an impoverished country where televisions and radios are hard-wired to receive only government-controlled frequencies. Cellphones were banned outright in 2004. In May, the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York ranked North Korea No. 1 -- over also-rans like Burma, Syria and Uzbekistan -- on its list of the '10 Most Censored Countries.' That would seem to leave the question of Internet access in North Korea moot."
"the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York"
I have heard its a dangerous place.....
Steve.
They have no electricity for lights, what makes you think they have electricity for internet? They'd have more luck using tubes.
First Po[Censored by Republic of North Korea]
It can giggle all it wants. The galaxy's not gettin any of our Bourbon.
That's one less third-world country I have to add to my server's firewall blocking rules!
:)
On another note, I don't think Internet access is high on their priorities. Building big bombs seems to be first on their agenda. If only they followed Iran's research strategy and started looking for plans on the internet, I bet their tests would go much better.
It looks like we're going to have to change all those In Soviet Russia... jokes to In North Korea...
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Do not live in a country ruled by a paranoid dictator?
Man, sucks to be them. My guess is the lack of electricity in the country is some sort of ploy to confuse all of our advanced weapons and smart bomb technology. ;-)
It is also worth checking out Afghanistan and Mongolia at night. From looking at their night time maps, I admit that I am just AMAZED at how awesome their energy conservation programs are. California could learn a lot from Afghanistan for sure. And Mongolia better not give the US any lip.
And if you are looking at the map, check out how well lit Iran is. I don't know about you, but with the amount of bright lights all over that country, I'm guessing the US wouldn't hit that. I think we like our bitches more backwards and with a southern accent. :-)
Seriously. Was something like 60 euro per hour at the Yanggakdo Hotel in Pyongyang via satellite connection. I doubt it was censored or even monitored, though I'd be a fool to not at least concede the possibility.
And the biggest issue here is the lack of internet access for citizens? That's really like no news. The internet hasn't been that long with us so how can you even think that it could be available in a such poor and controlled country. What you should be conserned about is their basic needs, food, healthcare, farming machinery etc. Of course internet, if it was available for them by some miracle, could help them break free from the crazy leader but still, that's like climbing to a tree backwards.
Millions of teenage boys with severely limited access to porn! It's like something out of a horror movie.
The Internet. Yeah. Gret thing. Usefull tool. Fun plaything.
Ultimate requirement as a definition of a states wellbeing? Hell no.
The arrogance of suggesting the internet supercedes items such as newspapers, phones (remember those things? No IP, just voice -> voltage -> voice), hell, even a decent postal service is laughable.
North Korea? Yeah, the place sucks. I haven't lived there, but I have visited, and even by what could be seen from the touristy approved areas it's not a good place. That's not the point of my post.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day. give a man the internet and he can setup a blog b*tching about the lack of fish and why girls don't like him.
Unless he is in NK in which case he gets thrown in jail after the first google search.
It's like China, but to an extreem, they maintain power by keeping the people the govern unimformed of what the rest of the world is doing, the last thing they want is for the public to learn. Especially learn how the world sees them. All tyranical goverments fall, and all good goverments go though coruption and greed(take a look at us here in the U.S.A. The only goverments that survive are those where the people are in control. Like I say to many people real life, if you didn't vote... Shut up!!
"Too bad that bureaucrats' hunger for power is never matched by greater quantities of wisdom or intelligence!!--Could it
OKay... "In North Korea, only old people use--"
Oh, sorry, wrong joke, nevermind...
who really wants North Korean porn. Come on North Korea, see all the porn and ads the internet has to offer! Sure some may look at material that isn't flattering to your regime, but if history is any judge, 99% of them will be too busy "punching the monkey" in more ways than one to care.
Plus naked Koreans!
Monstar L
I read Slashdot all the time!
I read Slashdot all the time and all DPRK citizens enjoy freedom of Internet use in our worker's paradise. It is well known that Great Leader Kim Il Sung singlehandedly created the Internet during the War of Resistance against the Japanese, passing on the specification to American military scientists who took credit dastardly for it twenty years later. Once again the imperialist dogs are trying to discredit us!
The Internet is all about sharing information. Yet, they chose to make it difficult for people to share and access it. Gosh, I hate this nytimes.com login form. Here is a direct link to the article (no login required).
Cutting off Internet access is sort of like imposing economic sanctions on yourself.
In North Korea's case though, it's not like the citizens have any money that they'd spend on anything via the Internet though.
Lets air drop thousands of C64's, 2400 buad modems and AOL CDs into NK. Of course they are going to have figure out how to power them, find a phone line and then figure out how to get the C64 to read a CD but hey we can't do everything for them.
The image in TFA merely indicates that the North Koreans are apparently very respectful of light pollution.
Obliterating our beautiful night skies with yucky orange glow should not be seen as a sign of civilisation.
Of course, the reality probably is that they aren't environmentally concious at all, but simply don't have much electricity; however, to use a dark night-time satellite image as proof to bolster that assumption, is pretty ignorant and Amer-Euro-centric[TM].
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
All the koreans that play Starcraft on Battlenet still are from South Korea then?
...about your oppression and lack of intern.......OH WAIT.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
While I agree that censorship is BAD, why is this newsworthy now?
Why the highlight in North Korea? Is Korea going to be the next Irak?
AFAIK, it is not the government of North Korea that denies access to the internet, it is the IANA that denies North Korea (and Cuba) access to the WWW by not providing the suffix .kp extensions to them.
Not that the people there would have gotten ISP anyway, but at least their
cheerful leader could have downloaded more US films, ordered an Ipod,...
Someone give this man a +1 Funny. (That was the intent, yes?)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Only Young and Old North Koreans need food, electricity, telephones, information, ....
I think in the west we overrate the importance of the internet. At the end of the
day if the internet suddenly vanished the world economy would survive. If the oil
suddenly vanished , well you get the idea. So why do people thing that a country that
has deliberately cut itself off from most of the outside world NEEDS the internet?
They don't. They don't operate under a capilist economic system so any business
argument is moot anyway and as for the entertainment side , well they don't even
have proper TV or radio entertainment so first things first perhaps. I'm sure
the population after having to survive the whims of a psychotic dictator will
manage to survive the 21st century without access to Slashdot or YouTube.
I took a trip to the DPRK about a year ago, and had a chance to see a "computer lab" in one of the "showcase" high schools.
- 1070525/
They are for the most part still using Win95, etc. As mentioned in the article, they have their own national intranet, but not Internet access. Sanctions probably make it difficult to get newer things.
Interestingly, for political reasons, they do not use the (South) Korean version of Windows, but rather they are working on their indigenous solution for entering text and displaying Korean script (hangul/chosongul).
Some pictures are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryu2/49295211/in/set
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
From the article,
Here's the referenced article. Bit useless unless you live close to the border, but better than nothing I suppose.
*blinking cursor*
It is not true that North Korea is an internet black hole. There are a number of sites, such as http://www.mybaduk.com/ aka Koryo Baduk, aka International Friendship Baduk Game Site, DPRK (North Korea) Lotto Venture which are at least intermittantly reachable.
When there is connectivity, traceroute suggests a very long, slow trip, via China.
to use a dark night-time satellite image as proof to bolster that assumption, is pretty ignorant and Amer-Euro-centric[TM].
Hello, McFly?
It ain't a western presumption, its a modern-world-centric presumption. Even most 3rd world countries put out a lot of light in their cities and all the 1st and 2nd world countries are bright and shiny light bulbs.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
They have no Internet, cellphones, hardly any lights at night. All those "modern" conveniences are important to science and engineering, especially science and engineering culture. Yet N Korea has apparently have nuclear bombs, one of the heights of tech achievement for any society.
Of course Koreans are as natively smart as any people. Maybe smarter: they have to outwit their totalitarian regime to survive. And they invented moveable type at least a half-century before Europe's vaunted Gutenberg. In fact, pigs appear to have begun domestication in the Korean peninsula before anywhere else (except somehow simultaneously directly across the Pacific, in Peru, but that's another story...). N Koreans are smart, but they're extremely poor and ill equipped. Yet they got the bomb.
It's clear that they got the bomb tech from elsewhere. From our "allies", Pakistan. Which sent nuke tech to at least N Korea, Libya and Iran, probably during Reagan/Bush, while the US let them all get away with it. OK, we straightened out Libya (for now - Kadaffy is like a Bugs Bunny villain), but the rest are some of our most dangerous enemies. And though they're cutting off the Internet (except maybe Pakistan) as fast as they can, they're developing these extreme scientific "achievements". Cutting into the only superiority the US has, apart from massive production (dependent on their even more massive oil exports, except from N Korea, which exports nothing but fear).
Maybe we're not so smart, despite our Internet and 24h electric lights.
--
make install -not war
what's so huge and brightly lit off the eastern shore of South Korea, in the sea?
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
North korea claims they have a high speed nationwide network, but that they can not connect it to the internet since USA dominates it.
The official webpage of north korea is: www.voiceofkorea.org
You can contact a representitive here: DPRK@voiceofkorea.org
I actually offered them to install a wifi link for free from Seoul to Pyongyang. Here is the response:
===========
Hi
I deeply appreciate your advices.
However, we can not use the facility of South Korea at this time because the two governments did not yet agree for this project.
You are absolutely right that good communication can often overcome suspicion and disagreement.
I will forward your message to the concerned ministry of DPRK government, and I will inform you when I get response.
I will also tell you if any DORK company is interested in developing such project with you.
Thank you.
Sincerely yours
VOICE OF KOREA
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
What would you expect after you yourself put economic sanctions on them?
Some kind of economic wonder?
And however they managed to make an a-bomb after all.
And ignoring excellent supporting evidence because it isn't shiny-happy is pretty boring.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I think in the west you overrate the importance of oil, too. The People's Republic of Korea has successfully progressed to switching most of its cars to alternative, environmental-friendly biofuel.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
How many problems do they have with terrorists? I can see Bush trying to implement such a "security" plan. I mean, someone has to think of the children!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
What's the point of having internet access when you don't have electricity?
The island with dormant volcano, and the air strip on it with a very large 4 engine jet on it? And a miget? You should know.
kimjongil@kwp.nk
Millions of Koreans who have not played starcraft or WOW.....
Simply Amazing!
Joke over....
Their suffering is dismal and depressing.
Its probably not that hard in a country where hardly anyone owns a car.
It was only in hindsight, somewhere around 2040 AD that children asked their (formerly slashdotting (grand)parents) why they had had, in their hands, the opportunity to change the world for the better, yet resigned to waiting until the MPAA knocked on their door.
Presumably means the RIAA will eventually drop the 300 lawsuits it just filed against North Koreans?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4677663.st m
This is a closer up pic that was in the news a few weeks ago.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
...even old people don't use email!
While more overtly Orwellian, the end result is of course the same as selling tunable sets and keeping a compliant media under tight rein (US).
you had me at #!
I suspect it is going to become quite an old-fashioned modern-world-centric presumption quite quickly. Several parts of the UK are planning to turn off all street lighting outside of town centres from midnight to 5am to save on electricity, carbon emissions and to reduce light pollution.
They do use cars for delivery of goods, agriculture, etc.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
Judging from recent missile tests, the AAA Pyongyang city & regional map should suffice.
Dark Reflection
If internet access is as trivial as you say, why do their governments spend time and energy making sure they can't have it? (Or, at least, can't have it all, in China?) If the internet were nothing but mindless YouTube, why would Kim Jong Il or Hu Jintao give two shits about it?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
without electrcity, who needs the net?
most in NK are likely worrying about starving alot more than they are worried about the internet
unless maybe they can order pizza
Wouldn't it be more appropriate to label North Korea as an Internet White Hole, as in a region of space where no information can enter?
You made me picture "The Postman", when that army is sitting around in the quarry watching Sound of Music. Damn you! I'd forgotten!
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
I guess North Koreans don't really know what they're missing but they'd probably be better off if Kim Jong-il accidentally tested one of his nukes in the middle of the country. Why hasn't that guy been assassinated yet?
Yes but your average person doesn't have one.
A nighttime satellite photo constitutes espionage?
moot
-adjective
1. open to discussion or debate
If it really was an "Internet black hole", it would suck the rest of the Internet right in.
Which it doesn't.
So it's not a black hole.
What is that, exactly? Money for nothing, housing for free? "Standard of Living" should be measured by the number of individual liberties not taken by the State, not the presence of some arbitrary welfare system.
Here is my plan:
1) Build a few million super-sexy ruggedized laptops designed to re-charge via solar cells.
2) Load these laptops down with the fruits of the decadent west localized into the North Korean dialect.
3) Build a few hundred thousand ruggedized WiMAX APs designed to self-assemble into an ad-hoc network.
4) Bomb North Korea into the information age.
Collectivism has caused more human misery than any other idea of the human mind. With every vote I cast and every dollar I give to politicians, I am guided by my desire to see it crushed and swept off the face of the earth. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/ dprk-dark.htm (DMSP image of Korean Peninsula at night.)
As for tubes, as soon as Korea is reunited, or even if China annexes N Korea, they will have bright shiny new InterTubes and every N Korean will have a cell phone in a couple of years considering the enterprising nature of both their border states.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
At the bottom of that page is a supposed speech by our illustrious president. Uhmmm. You'd think a Democrat wrote this! :)
Text from Voice of Korea:
The speech of George W Bush to the world audience
"I warn you that don't even think about your lives in the diversity ! The reason is simple. I am the ruler of the United States and the rest of the world. Do you need more reasons than this ? Therefore, every primitive nation must follow American rules and should obey to USA system. I will tell you what to do and you just do what I say. That's enough to make the world secure. Therefore, you just shut up and follow me otherwise I will teach you with my gun and I will shoot your ass as I did to dirty and smelly Afghanistan and Iraq".
The president of USA and the rest of world, George W Bush (Junior !).
Uh... Yeah...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
> North Korea has chosen to stay wholly off the grid.
I'm sure Fearless Leader is on the grid. And that's all that has to be, given we recognize the right of the person most able to kill off his political enemies as being just as legitimate as democracy and freedom.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Nah, the secretary of Defense would be just interested in the view.
I was thinking more of like, "It's like a type of Global Habitrail... with bunnies in tubes in the tubes, delivering the messages..."
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
if you've ever read any chomsky...
We need a new Godwin's Law.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
boy you might be legally retarded!
I like your Macs, but I don't like your Mac users. (with apologies to Gandhi)
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59043,00 .html - well as easy as you can sleep with a bunch of big ol' 20th century howitzers aimed at your capital...
I just stumbled into this thought I'd share it. I'm signing up for the email account.
http://www.culturehole.com/article.asp?blog_id=11
The 17th was The 80th Anniversary of Formation of the Down-with-Imperialism Union big news people, big news.
http://www.kcckp.net/en/
Hee Hee The drinking bird does all the work!
I've read that Japanese squid fishing ships attract squid from the deep by shining bright lights into the ocean. Supposedly this is visible from space. I wonder if that is what you see offshore?
Just a note on that. Their online store offers a DRM free version of "Hong Kil Dong" for only $2.50 US.
What a bargain.
I would *love* to be able to do that here (Albuquerque, NM USA). Aside from "crime prevention," I don't understand why we need so many lights. I'm not saying that good reasons do not exist, only that I cannot think of any...dark sky kicks ass.
It just shows how deeply ingrained the agressive consumeristic attitude towards nature is in the western psyche. It's both wasteful and unnatural to have lights at night, so by turning them off North Koreans both preserve he enviroment and stay healthy.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
I want to know how they lit up the border like that so nice and crisp. I'm guessing it's the border fences and watch towers.
Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
And probably turn them back on after their rates of street violence (already very high in the UK) skyrocket.
This story wanted me to post about something that's been floating around in my mind for awhile... Let's assume the DPRK has *some* form of Internet link... I don't beleive they are totally isolated on the net, probably have a decent sized pipe with PRC. Now if one were attempt hacking anything anything within their border... do you *really* think the FBI/CIA/SS or any other agency (or your local law-enforcement/intelligence agencies in your home country) would really give a rat's tail? Heck they might even ask you if you have anything they feel they should know?
they still use emacs
You saw the 'outside of town centres' bit, I presume.