North Korean 3G Mobile Subscriptions Hit Half a Million

angry tapir writes "The number of 3G cellular subscriptions in North Korea passed half a million during the first quarter, according to the country's only 3G cellular operator. The Koryolink network had 535,133 subscriptions at the end of March, an increase of just over 100,000 on the end of December 2010."

Comments

Yay!

[gustgr]

Great news, almost three times the number of people they have in slave camps!

Propaganda networks for the propaganda villiages?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised that the North Korean nomenklatura even numbers in the hundreds of thousands. This has the vague odor of propaganda about it...

That would be mean 535,132

[AmigaHeretic]

more 3G cell phones than light bulbs in North Korea, no?

http://www.google.com/search?client=&rls=en&q=north+korea+satellite

Sauce?

[atari2600a]

I follow KCNA's official news proxy on twitter & I see no mention of it. Did someone pick it up via a television broadcast or something?

Re:costume jewelry

[grif_91]

I was unaware that the 3G phone use in North Korea was a relevant enough topic for a "project research". Nor that it had such a strong connection to costume "Jewelry". Must be some important jewelry if they make a proper noun out of it.

What?!

[MrEricSir]

North Korea is entering the information age? Perhaps the rapture really IS coming!

Re:NORTH Korea

[Hadlock]

Bribing the people in charge of the people in charge of The People is a small price to pay to stay in power. The cost of the phones plus the cost of the network (only in downtown Pyongyang no doubt) is probably around $100,000,000. Not chump change, but cheaper than a new battleship, and streches your "absolute dictator bribe money" dollar a lot further than a year's worth of rice for the peasants who are too weak and poor to revolt.
 
The same people getting phones now probably got color TVs in the 1980s.

US: 2,000,000 in jail

[Zero return]

And a quarter of the number of people that the US has in jail.

Re:US: 2,000,000 in jail

[Zontar The Mindless]

And yet the US has only 13 times as many people.

Re:US: 2,000,000 in jail

[Hultis]

According to statistics from Wikipedia, 0.83% of North Korea's population lives in slave camps and 0.75% of the US population lives in prison. One could argue that slave camps are worse than prisons, but the numbers are very much comparable.

Re:US: 2,000,000 in jail

[Anonymous Coward]

One could argue that conditions in slave camps are worse then prisons?

There is no argument.

NK - they dont arrest you, they arrest you, your children, and your parents. (3 generations is the standard approach to dissenters)
NK - there is only one punishment for breaking the labor camp rules, you are shot.

I'm not disagreeing that the US justice and penal systems have significant problems. However there is absolutely no comparison to the horror of north korea.

For fun - check out: http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Kimjongilia/70113934

Re:US: 2,000,000 in jail

[thaig]

And a quarter of the number of people that the US has in jail.

These are political prisoners, not ordinary every day thieves or drug dealers.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/images-reveal-scale-north-korean-political-prison-camps-2011-05-03

Interesting how ready people are to rush to the defence of anything to bash the US. I'm a Zimbabwean in the UK, BTW and I regularly hear people defending Mugabe, presumably because they think he's left wing and anti American. There is some incredible loss of perspective, unfortunately but also demonstrates how little anyone really cares about "the poor people in X" when compared to making some political point at home.

Re:US: 2,000,000 in jail

[Hazel Bergeron]

Many thieves and drug dealers are political prisoners. "Political prisoner" is just a euphemism for "does something which I think should be permissible but they don't". To a libertarian, anyone jailed for not paying taxes may be a political prisoner; to a militant Irish republican, The Maze was full of political prisoners; to a communist, anyone jailed for taking enough bread to eat is a political prisoner. AI has tried to use the alternative term "prisoner of conscience", but even that definition is dangerous, excepting those who condone "violence" but not really explaining what counts as violence and what counts as condoning it.

As for "I'm a Zimbabwean in the UK", that's how you self-identify. To another Zimbabwean, you might be an exiled ex-occupier. The "incredible loss of perspective" is by the international Western media condemning Mugabe as if he were operating alone, controlling a whole country, while forgetting that every regime can only exist thanks to the support of a significant number of local residents. Some people would rather suffer extreme hardship than live in a country dominated by a few colonial landowners. Similarly, some people would rather live isolated under a military or religious dictatorship than under a US puppet government. Maybe you don't feel this. Maybe you prefer the security of living in the West. Maybe long lifespan, good nutrition and a warm house are to you of primary importance. Maybe you put yourself before some perceived need of your "people", whoever your people may be. But the first mistake anyone in the West makes in this sort of debate is to assume that everyone wants this too.

So, recognising the nastiness Mugabe's men get up to, how about asking yourself: why is it that conditions were so bad in Zimbabwe that Mugabe ended up in power? What could those with power/money/influence have done to compromise? Consider how Britain handled the IRA: in the end, it had to mean listening to their grievances rather than continually dismissing their opinions and their belief in a right to some of your power.

Re:US: 2,000,000 in jail

[thaig]

Hi,

You're letting your politics choose bad friends for you and it's not a good idea because it means that without thought or consideration you choose to be on the side of some very bad people. Everyone has choices including the people in charge of the DPRK and my home too and if we wound back the problems of life far enough we'd find that the DPRK helped Mugabe, for example, or that Henry Kissenger helped Mugabe or that his mum wasn't nice to him or whatever. But I don't blame Mugabes behaviour on them.

The way you are trying to compare two very different things to try and bash the US or mitigate the DPRK is a loss of perspective and it's usually the stuff one reads in government controlled newspapers in the kind of place I'm from. It relies on people not really knowing what immense freedoms there are in the civilised world and on people from the civilised world not having the tiniest inkling what it's really like to live in a police state. I wonder if you have ever felt that you can't say what you think at a party of friends because you're not sure whether some of them have relatives in the secret police? I have.

This is why it makes me feel ill to see such, frankly and to be kind, silly comparisons. I

Unfortunately, I have now put you in a position where you have to argue on the side of even more horrible people in order to try and win the argument. But if you do then you're just making the same mistake even more thoroughly. Meanwhile people who have courage or morals or a sense of decency that got them into trouble are getting beaten and starved quietly far beyond the reach of the BBC to exclaim on their woes and you just tried to make it sound ok.

Regards,

Tim

Re:US: 2,000,000 in jail

[wisty]

You are full of shit. A free marijuana activist who gets thrown in jail for speaking is a political prisoner. A deadbeat pothead dealer with free marijuana politics who happens to get busted is NOT a political prisoner. They may, in their addled minds, see themselves as victims of unjust policies, and perhaps they even are, but they are not in jail for their politics. They *might* be in jail *because* of their politics, but they had every choice to express their view, fight for their beliefs, but not actually break the law.

In North Korea, the act of expressing your views will get you sent to prison. Not "trading on the open market" (or whatever they call capitalist behavior), but expressing the view that doing so might be a good idea.

I don't have an easy answer for Zimbabwe. Unlike, say, Arafat, I don't really think Mugabe is a lessor evil, though.

Re:US: 2,000,000 in jail

[Hazel Bergeron]

just be even moderately successful at your job and have fantastic healthcare. [...] it has nothing to do with availability or quality.

The rich have fantastic healthcare almost everywhere, regardless of underlying regime.

Re:US: 2,000,000 in jail

[Hazel Bergeron]

Is it a US thing to teach "political crime" to mean the same thing as "crime of expressing an opinion"?

I guess that's a way for the US to claim that there are no political prisoners in the US, since, hey, the US (sorta mostly) has freedom of speech.

To quote Bierce, advice is the smallest current coin. Activism may begin with speech, but when you have been brought up to think that's where it ends, it's no surprise that nothing changes.

Dear Leader should run AT&T

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

How can he get 500k North Koreans 3G service and AT&T still struggles to get me a usable data service here in the States?

Dear Leader Kim Jong Il should run AT&T.

Ridiculous

[creat3d]

There's no way that many North Koreans are well-fed enough to hold a conversation. I refuse to believe it.

Re:Ridiculous

[royallthefourth]

Gimme a break. A persistent problem in the food supply doesn't mean that everyone is starving.

A number without context isn't too useful

[Anubis IV]

For reference, North Korea has a population of roughly 24M, so that's roughly one 3G subscription per 50 people. I know that news on North Korea is popular around here, but I'm guessing I'm not the only one that didn't have its population memorized.

Re:NORTH Korea

[xnpu]

I know Americans aren't very welcome in NK, and also barred from doing business by the US gov., but this doesn't apply to Asian's and Europeans. While there probably aren't 500.000 expats in NK, there are certainly 10's of thousands and they do appreciate having a mobile phone. I suspect many sign up for 3G as well.