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How Technology Gets the News Out of North Korea
itwbennett writes "Kim Dong-cheol is a North Korean with 'a double life,' writes the IDG News Service's Martyn Williams in a story on ITworld. 'In addition to his job as a driver for a company, Kim also works as a clandestine reporter for AsiaPress, a Japanese news agency that's taken advantage of the digital electronics revolution to get reports from inside North Korea,' says Williams. 'When we started training journalists in 2003 or 2004, getting cameras into North Korea was a real problem,' said Jiro Ishimaru, chief editor of the news agency, at a Tokyo news conference on Monday. 'Nowadays, within North Korea you are able to have your pick of Sony, Panasonic or Samsung cameras.' The images they're capturing are 'often startling,' and it 'documents a side of the country the government doesn't want the world to see,' says Williams."
>>"Kim Dong-cheol is a North Korean with 'a double life' Not anymore.
Really do we need to know how this is done? I am hoping this is a red heiring and that they are using other methods to get the SD cards out.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The interesting part is that they use Chinese cellphone networks, which leak into North Korea at the border, to get the videos out. (The Burmese opposition also does that, connecting to Bengladeshi networks.)
I wonder why China lets that happen, as it would be trivial for them to ban any data coverage in this area and/or report any suspicious activity to the North Korean authorities. Maybe it's a way for them to put some pressure on their North Korean "ally", which has become somewhat of an embarrasment to them lately.
If cell phone coverage goes down, they could still use carrier pigeons to send Flash drives to China or South Korea...
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Yeah good point. And yeah, black market is my guess. Still though, probably pretty risky for someone to go around taking pictures with one of these cameras.
It's always confirmation bias!
To answer your question - yes. Lots of us care about North Korea.
It does suck to feel pretty helpless for the most part though there are a number of avenues available to help in small ways. Humans are a varied bunch in a number of ways and while you have one view point, many hold others.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Starving to death is so under-rated.
And everything you list as being a cause of the problems of North Korea, other than geographic location are due to the dictatorship.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
North Korea is very opaque, even for China and Russia. China can only go so far in assessing the state of North Korea through its official channels (even if they attach intel officers to their diplomatic mission). It's not like Chinese agents can mingle with the rest of society in North Korea like they could, if posing as "immigrant workers" or "tourists" in South Korea or Japan. This helps them get additional, cheap information.
A place with no advertisements, no light pollution, and few cars sounds good to me.
The dictatorship is bad, but the economic situation is caused by bad location in the globe, lack of innovation to improve farming/manufacturing, corruption, and bad trading.
Are you fucking serious?
Let me give you just one example. A doctor goes to NK to treat cataracts using a simple procedure. He cures the blindness of a hundred people in one sitting. When they take the bandages off, the first thing they do when they can see is rush past the doctor to worship the pictures of the Dear Leader and the Great General and thank them for the gift of sight. Of course, that's what they have to do in the presence of the authorities or any cameras whose contents are likely to be viewed by the authorities.
NK is a tin pot hereditary dictatorship, it is a necrocracy with a dead man as its head of state. It is a surreal world that shows what happens when absolute power gets into the hands of an unstable lunatic. Its people are the most oppressed in the modern world.
"Bad location in the globe" my trunks. It's within easy trading distance of Japan on one side and China on the other.
Jesus wept!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Except there's a SOUTH Korea with a rather NICE economic situation, plenty of innovation, a bit cleaner government, and booming trade. It's not all that far.
Well, with the "I can't" attitude, you're right. But if you stopped thinking individually, instead more along the lines of "We can't" - then you'd be lying, because there is a lot that we can do together.
The reason why people make these videos and images isn't so that 1 person on the other side of the border can feel sympathy and try to revolutionize everythings - its for massive appeal to as many people as possible, so that a large group of people might undertake humanitarian efforts.
But - I mean, go ahead with that attitude. Does anyone really care about you? I mean, I've hardly interacted with you, but there isn't anything I can do to change your mind, you aren't a priority. In fact - I can't do anything about anything my own country - my one vote is drowned by millions of others, my recycling efforts are negated by others negligance, and even my job is so replacable by someone else that my contributions to society are really nothing.
If you don't feel particularily humanitarian about something - like you don't want to help the North Koreans, that's absolutely fine. Freedom of opinion. But don't parade it under the guise that "I would if I could".
I care.
Millions of people as slaves to a totalitarian monarchy and millions of men under arms destabilizing the entire region.
If there was an opening of the DPRK, following the refugee crisis and 10-20 years of economic hardship for the Republic of Korea to bring the north into Third World status, the United States, Japan, and RoK would all be able to back forces from the brink of war, downsize military spending and remove a nuclear threat from the region.
The US would be able to fold up an Army division, forward Marine base and most of an Air Force alone.
Furthermore it would be one less thing where the US and Japan oppose the Russian Federation and People's Republic of China.
Yeah but there is no oil there, so who gives a fuck.
No, they fought for what they thought was a better life and were misled and betrayed by their leaders.
When a KGB agent is the good guy, you know the rest of the situation is f*cked up...
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
You know you're either trolling or an incredibly dense American urban hipster with no grasp of self-awareness when you decide that "advertisements", "light pollution" and "cars" are infinitely worse than "starvation", "corruption", "bad trading", and "living under the iron-clad rule of a megalomaniac".
You know what's worse than advertisements? Not being able to buy anything because there's nothing to buy. No food, no clothes, no nothing. You know what's worse than light pollution? Not being able to turn the lights on at night. You know what's worse than cars and traffic? An ox cart pulled by a malnourished ox that you're seriously considering turning into food this winter, even though the meat's tougher than nails and it means you'll have to pull your plow by hand next spring. But, hey, it's that or starve.
But, hey, that fixie you were riding on before you posted your nonsense on this thread will totally come in handy in the Middle Ages-meets-zombie apocalypse world you have mapped out in your sociopathic head as an "ideal utopia" for your urban hipster douchebaggery. Good luck with that.
Life is such grand comedy. Alas, it's tragic, dark comedy...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
It's as though they are stuck in the 1950s soviet era. Except for the trickling in of technology from the outside to their wealthy, it's basically a nation frozen in time.
When that time distortion field "pops", reality is going to hit them VERY hard. I'm willing to bet the PTSD will force many into suicide. For all the hell they've been through, I could imagine why.
I genuinely feel sorry for them. Sometimes life is unfair, for others it's just damn cruel!!!