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North Korean 3G Mobile Subscriptions Hit Half a Million

Posted by timothy on from the may-I-suggest-a-merger dept.

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."

6 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Yay! by gustgr · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  2. US: 2,000,000 in jail by Zero+return · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    1. Re:US: 2,000,000 in jail by Hultis · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:US: 2,000,000 in jail by thaig · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      This is all just my personal opinion.
  3. Dear Leader should run AT&T by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  4. A number without context isn't too useful by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.