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North Korea Opens .kp Sites On the Internet
eldavojohn writes "What an auspicious day for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea! To commemorate the 65th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, North Korea will no longer depend on Chinese national internet service to reach the outside world — they have their own connection and are hosting sites like the state run media. The article mentions that about a thousand websites are coming online, including services like Skype and Twitter. From where I sit in the United States, I can't seem to get any .kp TLD sites to resolve, but the news is promising if in fact it will bring more information to the information-starved masses of North Korea."
I'm going to beat the land rush to register "NorthKoreaIsTheBestKorea.kp" before Kim Jong-Il gets there first!
I doubt they even have TVs or radios. I bet it's not even legal for them to either.
...that the average North Korean even has a computer to access the internet with.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
And by love, I mean want to see buried 10 feet under!
Now to go find a dog hanging from a bridge. It's DINNER time in Korea!
And don't drink the water!
I recall reading somewhere that radios imported from China could be bought in North Korea, but you were legally obliged to have the radio modified so that it could receive only the government broadcasts. A similar law existed in much of the former Communist Bloc.
see subject lol :D
They have TV, but tuning in to Chinese or South Korean broadcasts is illegal. Their television sets are even modified to avoid such actions.
North Koreans to see the outside world? The NK government move seems like a way to cheaply post propaganda that other countries can access.
I doubt you'll actually bother looking up info on TV/radio ownership in North Korea. I bet your random guessing and stabbing in the dark will get +5 Insightful.
On a tangential ramble, Kim Jong-Il's Comedy Club was a very interesting documentry, and a rare glimse inside the weider-than-fiction world of North Korea.
This is just going to be for more external propaganda. The very act of using this domain IS propaganda.
Even if it does indicate more internal dissemination of information, more information isn't always good, if it's more of the same disinformation.
You mean just plain "starved".
The Chinese people want information.
The Chinese government wants prosperity.
The North Korean people want to survive.
The North Korean government wants purple neon sheep carrying a glowing statue of the leader in massive parade.
From the effin' article:
"While Internet access is believed to be available to small group of elite members of the ruling party, the rest of the country is not permitted access to outside sources of news." :(
The real reason for this is that Kim Jong Il's cognac distributor went electronic and he needed to provide a contact email. Kim Jong Il knew the only domain for a email address he could trust is one Norht Korea owned, so they had to make .kp.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I read somewhere that their radio was permanently tuned to the govt channel. and you couldn't turn it off. very 1984. i don't know if the author of that article was hyperbolizing the reality in north korea or if 'dear leader' had taken 1984 for a "totalitarian regime for dummies".
Radios are quite normal in North Korea. They are sealed to specific ranges and checked every, I think, 3 months, to prevent people from listening to foreign media.
TV's are also prominent amongst the higher classes of the country. South Korean soap operas are apparently quite popular to watch illegally on imported DVD'
...just about every other national domain has been (ab)used by people thinking of ways to use the letters in "cute" ways, this will doubtless be used the same way. North Korea won't care - money is money. Though I just can't see Kim Possible fans being amongst the takers.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
let the mass hacking of .kp domains start.
South Korean soap operas are apparently quite popular to watch illegally on imported DVD'
I would hate to go to jail just because I wanted to find out if Kim ever recovered from double amnesia to discover his wife was really his father's ex-lover...
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
North Korea, or the "Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea" as they like to call themselves is a criminal state that murders its own citizens while denying them even the most basic human rights such as freedom of movement. The only North Koreans who will be blogging or communicating on these web sites will be ones from the Propaganda and Agitation ministries. North Korea has lost a lot of face over abducting Japanese and South Korean citizens, shooting down a Korean airliner, sinking a Korean destroyer, and the mass starvation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. North Korea wouldn't even exist if it weren't for external support from the Soviet Union, and later on China and South Korea. The only legitimate government on the Korean peninsula is the Republic of Korea. The regime in North Korea are a bunch of criminals and they maintain the largest prison in the world. Hopefully one day it will all end peacefully the same way that East Germany dissolved as soon as the Soviets refused to crush the crowds of demonstrators with their tanks.
mud.kp.
Dibs on the mud.kp domain.
How long before all the child model sites - long ago kicked off the com, net and org byways and even apparently now finding it hard to exist on the info highways, end up on ".kp?" Littlemodel.amber.kp seems the perfect fit! North Korea, kiddie porn... oh, the irony.
Now maybe we'll get Voice of Korea (was Radio Pyongyang) streamed on the internets! That's some good agitprop: "Today, Glorious Leader stated that he is pleased at the 3000% increase in rice production announced by the Ministry of Agriculture. The running dog capitalist Western press had no comment on our great achievement." Really! They still broadcast stuff like this. It really doesn't get any better, comedy-wise.
That is all.
North Korea to outside world web connection severed by the North Korean government in 3....2....
The game.
I read somewhere that their radio was permanently tuned to the govt channel. and you couldn't turn it off.
Sorta correct. The radios are pre-tuned to the government station, and then sealed. If you're caught with a radio with its seals broken (i.e. someone opened it up) then you're arrested. This is to prevent people from trying to receive signals from South Korea and/or China. You can, however, turn the radios off.
I'm betting their computers are like their tv's.. a cardboard box with the glorious leader's picture on it.
the great firewall of china wasn't filtering ENOUGH out so they're going to do it themselves from now on.
Radios are sold and pre-set to official frequencies. If you have an imported radio, you are required to have it 'certified' which involves pre-seting it to the official frequencies and having a sticker placed on it so they can tell if its been tampered with to allow 'unofficial' broadcasts. the "organization" may come into your house and conduct inspections on this at any time to ensure it hasnt been tampered with.
TVs are less common, but exist nonetheless. Usually whoever owns a TV lets all their neighbors come by and watch it. Once again, it only gets official channels. VCRs and tapes are quite popular, mainly because when DVDs because wide-spread in China, they were able to buy second-hand VCRs from China for quite cheap.
The above is accurate ALTHOUGH the accusations COULD be put on different countries. The USSR shot down a korean plane that came into its airspace and the US has shot down a Iranian airliner claiming it was an wave of fighter aircraft (despite being far slower climbing constansly and only firing ONE missle at SEVERAL incoming aircraft (real naval action would have been to throw everything at incoming fighters including the kitchen sink after the experience at the falklands)) and as for mas starvation, how many indians died of that again after forced relocation to inhostipable regions of the US to make way for white settlers?
Ancient history? Yeah, that is convenient BUT this ancient history IS being remembered by people around the globe who use it to excuse their own injustices. It is a very powerful excuse. China does not want north korea but it wants the vassal state of south korea even less. That would mean US forces right at its borders. North Korea abducting Japanse citizens? Gosh, somehow I don't see China caring. That would be like Israel caring about germans getting killed. Japan is not wel liked in the region. Something about being a nation riddled with war crimes and never making attonement for it might have something to do with it.
And so North Korea continues to happen. As a buffer against the US as a way of saying "No, rampant captalism will NOT overrun the entire world" as a way of not having to answer just why this was allowed to go on.
And lets face it, IF NK is going to collapse, who is going to pay for it? The reunification of germany cost western germany dearly and is still not going smoothly. The collapse of the USSR has made the world less safe and make life in those regions far less free. One dictartorship fell, countless replaced it.
The world ain't a nice place. NK is one of most not nice places around but it happens because the rest of the world isn't nice enough to stop it. And that includes people like BKMOORE, the parent, who claim SK is only legitimate government... yah. That government never did any wrong. Nope...
AND that is what fuels division and allows NK to exist. If you want to change the world, you got to start with yourself. SK is puppet government that has become legit because it has made economic success so people forgot about the past. If you want to convince the NK that it must change its way, claiming money makes right is not going to do it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"dig kp. SOA" - nothing so far. Is this article a hoax?
In the early ninties, a country profile for the Library of Congress estimated that North Korean had about 250,000 television sets and 3.75 million radio sets, all fixed to receive only government broadcasts. Visitors cannot bring a radio into the country.
Radio and TV sets in North Korea are pre-tuned to government stations that pump out a steady stream of propaganda. The state has been dubbed the world's worst violator of press freedom by the media rights body Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Press outlets and broadcasters - all of them under direct state control - serve up a menu of flattering reports about Kim Jong-il and his daily agenda. North Korea's economic hardships or famines are not reported.
Ordinary North Koreans caught listening to foreign broadcasts risk harsh punishments, such as forced labour. The authorities attempt to jam foreign-based and dissident radio stations.
The "only glimmer of hope", according to RSF, is the "communications black market" on the North Korean-Chinese border. Recordings of South Korean TV soaps and films are said to circulate. North Korea country profile [Oct 2, 2010]
So, to go with Gijeong-dong we're going to have websites that show North Korea as being lovely and wonderful and maybe you should come across the border and join the glorious revolution.
Given the replies that while there are TVs and radios they're inspected regularly and have to certified to pick up only specific frequencies, I'd say I was close. The information-starved will remain so. They might open the borders enough to pull a China and sell what amounts to slave labor but human rights certainly won't follow.
You are missing the point. They haven't got internet for their citizens to use, they have it to tell the world know how wonderful things are in North Korea. Its a shame they did not go with '.nk' though - there are far more interesting domain name possibilities for that domain...
www.welac.kp/oor_people/orsuffering.html .
to the site they represent (except maybe e-mail), they allow information to come from the site.
Submitter needs to see an opthmaloogist about getting a stellarectomy.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
(wow, I managed to completely screw that up thanks to a broken HTML tag, even when using preview)
Furthermore, how would a TLD help bring information to the "information-starved masses"? Domain names don't bring information to the site they represent (except maybe e-mail), they allow information to come from the site.
Submitter needs to see an opthmaloogist about getting a stellarectomy.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
...to look for (and remove) certificates for North Korean Certificate Authorities. Oh this is going to go sooooo well.....
I have some scripts which periodically scan DPRK ips, and found a few things recently.
There is a news site at http://175.45.179.68
There are a couple http/https servers with self-signed certs for domains which dont yet exist:
176.45.176.6/7
And there are cisco routers at 175.45.176.131, 175.45.177.193,194,197,198,201
I tried to read that aloud with a straight face but failed miserably.
I see a site: www.faxesofevil.kp...it appears to be a free internet fax service.
When will the first North Korean porn site open?
And how long after that will it be taken down?
And how long after that will its proprietors be executed?
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
The state has been dubbed the world's worst violator of press freedom by the media rights body Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Huh, you must be referencing an older report. Allow me to bring you up to date on 2010's assessment of the illustrious Democratic People's Republic of Korea!
Internet: Nothing but a vague rumor
A very limited Intranet has developed, consisting of an email inbox, a few news sites relaying regime propaganda, and a browser providing access to the databank Web pages of the country’s three biggest libraries: the Grand People’s Study House and those of the Kim Il-Sung and Kim Chaek Universities. This Intranet is accessible only by academics, businessmen and high-ranking civil servants who have received special clearance.
Here's to hoping that once that intranet is connected to our internet we see those academics online :)
... there are nation states and there are sad states. I wish there was a non-detrimental way to help the people inside North Korea.
Oh, also, I like how one hour of internet usage in a cafe in North Korea will set you back $8.19 (high even by my cushy American standards) and yet the monthly wage in North Korea is a paltry $17.74. So yeah, go ahead and walk into an internet cafe and blow a month's salary in two hours. I almost feel guilty about bitching about Comcast's $40/month cable internet.
Furthermore Eritrea beat them out in 2009 leaving them at 174/175 on their worst violators
My work here is dung.
He may have been stabbing in the dark, but he was sort of right. TV ownership according to wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_of_North_Korea ) is 55 in 1000 households, while radio is more widespread. However all TV and radio sets are pre-tuned to government channels and sealed so the tuning cannot be changed (which carries sever penalties if you did manage it). And in any case foreign radio stations that can be picked up in NK are jammed.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
.kp? They must be nuts.
nationalism is not a trait unique to the usa, nor north korea, not brazil, china, india, switzerland, norway, etc...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
175.45.179.68
They appear to like RHEL:
175.45.176.6
175.45.176.7
They are starved alright but I don't think they would give two cents about their country coming "online"
The only ones with net access are the ones who are privileged. The masses are starving to death for their great leader.
Are you suggesting there are special rules for com, net and org domains that bar child modeling websites from those domains in particular? I don't recall ever seeing such terms in domain registration agreements and presume that takedowns of such websites are due to either hosting or law-enforcement issues.
nationalism is like a glue. without which, the pieces fly apart
indians have to believe in the idea of india for india to exist. if enough don't there's no pool of people to tap to keep the country together
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Perhaps someone can provide some citations to info on what frequencies they're using?
A.M. and shortwave radio technology is not high tech. It wouldn't take much knowledge of electronics to make receivers or frequency converters from parts out of old VCRs or whatever.
Clever hacks are possible too. If they're using the low cost Chinese CFL replacements for incandescent lamps, maybe some could be modified to work at a switching frequency that would allow them to act as an conversion oscillator to shift a desired signal to a vacant supported frequency.
Beyond radio inspections, their government might be able to tell what frequency a standard radio is tuned to by detecting radiation from the oscillator. The oscillator normally is offset by a standard amount from the frequency of the selected signal. (typically + 455 kHz for AM, + 10.7 MHz for FM)
To illustrate the principle, one can tune a typical FM radio to a quiet spot on the top half of the band, and hear the oscillator (silence instead of static) when a second nearby radio is tuned 10.7 MHz lower in frequency. I once read of a college station that went around tracking down listeners and surprised a few knocking on doors and giving them a prize. That's a pretty good gag, but hard to do in areas where the band is very congested. When one is tuned to the upper half of the band, the oscillator may fall on VHF aircraft frequencies. That is why many had those bans on using radios when flying.
yea....
Not according this to BBC documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSrcLC6Zz54
(Skip to ~1:40 to see them talking about a state radio in every kitchen that can't be turned off)
almost right.
Technically, the penalty for listening to South Korean broadcasts is death, but a small bribe is usually enough to get off without punishment.
-I only code in BASIC.-
In South Korea, it is illegal to tune to N. Korean radio, TV. Connecting to N. Korean internet sites is also illegal in South Korea.
"....but the news is promising if in fact it will bring more information to the information-starved masses of North Korea." ....You're trying to be funny, right?
Regards;
Most people here seem to be of the POV that this means the people of NK will somehow get more access to information. That is naive at best. The people outside the top of the party won't have any access to the internet: information is not going to get out to the oppressed masses. Perhaps the KCNA website will move to the North Korean domain from their current host in Japan.
LOL. Quite funny. So their using China Unicom/Netcom upstream from China (not unexpected) with a unfiltered allocation on the border routers/firewalls. Probably the same unfiltered internet IP ranges/peering that certain portions of the Chinese government/officials receive but the public doesn't (Facebook/Twitter filtered unfortunately for the Chinese public internet, but that may change soon, the Chinese filtering is mostly for "stability" and other things I won't get into...). Welcome to the NK internet! Now if you will only change your system to capitalism and ummm... maybe FEED YOUR DAMN PEOPLE!? WTF Kim Jong-Il or whatever the current dictator is... Bah humbug... They probably purchased the Cisco/Juniper hardware through a Chinese proxy. Wonder how the UN sanctions are affecting NK? NONE. I saw some BBC video back then of some NK "intranet" using Dell computers. I thought at least they would use a Chinese brand due to the sanctions! Nope... Typical NK... Mudkips!!! I !>!
I have a friend who is a ham radio operator who took his equipment on a cruise. The cruise ship was being repositioned, so they went around much of the Pacific (my friend is retired). Off the coast of North Korea, he could hear their hams talking. As soon as he tried to contact someone, the air went silent followed shortly by an extremely high power broadcast extolling the virtues of Kim Jong Il. My friend was using a Japanese call sign.
My point is that the equipment and expertise to do some of the things you mention does exist in North Korea. No doubt a few people do listen illegally to broadcasts out of South Korea. But that few people will never be the majority of the people or even a significant minority. I don't think you can overestimate the level of control the government has over the people, down to the psychological level where they can't even imagine having an open conversation or circumventing the government controls on their radios.
So their getting their internet upstream from China (China Unicom/Netcom AS4837) and the Chinese did them a favor but giving them unfiltered internet access from their AS peer/IP-range like the unfiltered internet certain officials and parts of the Chinese government have access too. Now only if they CHANGED THEIR MORONIC policies and actually HAVE THEIR PEOPLE NOT STARVE TO DEATH and switch to capitalism. Oh wait... that Juche policy and the idiots in NK and Kim Jong Il and whatever his dictator successor is now... Blah... BTW Mellisa Chan twittered from NK recently: http://twitter.com/melissakchan AJ Skype interview FROM NK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nahlla5Tx9M
the .kp ccTLD was created back in 2007.
.kp ccTLD infrastructure has been unreachable.
The only new news it that since Septptember of 2010 the
"...but the news is promising if in fact it will bring more information to the information-starved masses of North Korea".
I don't see why the existence of ".kp" domains will bring more information to the folks in North Korea, any more than the words
"Democratic People's Republic" in the country's official name would make it owned by the people, democratic, or a republic.
Labels have power, sure, but not always the way one hopes.
nope, there are not north korean hams, this is one of the most wanted countries. It is only operated very sporadically by foreign UN workers. Something is not correct in your story.
So he won't be so ronery any more...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
WHy is the score of this not a 5? I've seen some boring/unfunny 5's. This is bursting with cool info. Seriously.
It either stands for latrine duty or something even dirtier.
Either way, I don't want any part of it.
I would hate to go to Yodok just because I wanted to find out if Kim ever recovered from double amnesia to discover his wife was really his father's ex-lover...
Fixed that for you.
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
3000% increase over zilch still feeds nobody.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I can haz cheezburger?
The most recent news on the first site mentioned reads as follows:
Meetings Held at Industrial Establishments and Coop Farms
Pyongyang, October 8 (KCNA) -- Meetings were held at different factories, enterprises and on cooperative farms to congratulate leader Kim Jong Il upon his reelection as general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea.
Speeches were made there.
Speakers said that the reelection of Kim Jong Il to the highest post of the WPK marked a political event which provided a sure guarantee for the development of the Party and the final victory of the revolutionary cause of Juche.
Noting that he represents a banner of all the victories and glory, they underscored the need to glorify the tradition of devotedly defending him in any adversity and put further spurs to the production and construction under his Songun leadership.
They called upon all the party members and other working people to remain true to the noble will of Kim Jong Il and the leadership of the Party and successfully accomplish the revolutionary cause of Juche. -0-
in a way North Korea makes the world more interesting. I don't support their regime but at least it's not a copy-rinse-repeat capitalist generic state that we all live in It's different, not generic.
.kp ... oh .. NUTS.
Will it last? Or will North Korea shut it down in a few months? Time will tell...
Talking to your grandparents about what things used to be like is also low tech and also highly illegal there.
The real conundrum is deciding how much of a bribe to offer. To little, and it's a short trip behind the barn, or to the latrine, and you don't come back.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
the news is promising if in fact it will bring more information to the information-starved masses of North Korea."
Ha ha ha ha! No, stop please. You're killing me.
That eldavojohn, he's such a card.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
The running theme in Korean dramas actually seem to be saint-like wives having to deal with a total monster of a mother-in-law (since traditionally the wife moves in with the husbands family). Problem persists because father-in-law is a total wuss who won't tell his wife to stop being a bitch, the new wife doesn't want to demand respect for whatever reason, and the husband can't do much against his own mother to be effective.
Anyone remember Kremvax? Started out as a hoax, but eventually becamse something real.
In an even more ironic historical footnote, kremvax became an electronic center of the anti-communist resistance during the bungled hard-line coup of August 1991. During those three days the Soviet UUCP network centered on kremvax became the only trustworthy news source for many places within the USSR. Though the sysops were concentrating on internal communications, cross-border postings included immediate transliterations of Boris Yeltsin's decrees condemning the coup and eyewitness reports of the demonstrations in Moscow's streets
Who knows, perhaps someday the nascent net in Korea will lead to something greater?
The story is much more complicated than that; you're being selective with the facts here. There are a few issues about Japan's attitudes towards its past that still bother the heck out of a lot of people:
The trend is pretty clear: there is a significant conservative segment of the Japanese population whose attitudes just piss off the rest of the region, and there are many politicians who pander to them.
Are you adequate?
> by theheadlessrabbit (1022587) writes: ... but a small bribe is usually enough to get off without punishment.
Judging by your ID, the last time you tried that you made the bribe just slightly too small.
We won't even start to imagine what head you're missing, by the way...
What? So you means those 'tv detector vans' we have in the uk to find people who don't pay their tv license, are actually real? Not just scare tactics?
"Sorry, this programme is not available to watch again"
Yay for the licence fee! Thank god we have such a cool broadcaster.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I'm sure they only do it as a homage to the TV series The Prisoner.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Imperial Japan did terrible things in the region between the late 19th and mid 20th centuries. Some of the victims and their descendants are understandably disinclined to forgive or forget. Some ultra-nationalist-types are disinclined to admit the failings of themselves and their antecedents.
The "trend" you refer to is an absolutely typical and perfectly simple scenario that is repeated the world over and throughout the history of humankind. Anywhere there has been war, there is bound to be persistent bad blood.
>>Kim Jong-Il's Comedy Club [bbc.co.uk]
this would be interesting to watch, if it wasn't censored for me to watch outside of the uk.
So, where do I go in order to goatse Dear Leader?
nuts.kp
I registered bit.kp for use as a URL shortener, in honor of Kim Jong-il's adorable short stature. What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, crap. They just repossessed it. I better go blog about this!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Hey! Kim Jong-Il has invented the Internet, and is allowing us to use it as well!