Slashdot Mirror
The Information Age: North Korean Style
An anonymous reader writes "It seems cell phones and the internet have come to the reclusive nation of North Korea — albeit in a manner that you might not expect. North Korea now sports over a million cell phones, although calls are not allowed outside of the country and text messages come daily from North Korean authorities sporting government propaganda. The internet is not the global internet of Twitter and Facebook, but a government-crafted intranet that is restricted to just a tiny percentage of the population. The intranet is restricted to elites in North Korea with good standing. The intranet uses message boards, chat functions, and state sponsored messages; its use has also been encouraged among universities, technical professionals and scientists, and others to exchange info. An even smaller fraction can access the outside internet. All of this seems to be an effort to control the information revolution without losing authority."
All of this seems to be an effort to control the information revolution without losing authority.
Let's just stop and think for a minute about that sentence.
... but then again I guess that's also the case with anything I find on North Korea.
A controlled revolution isn't really a revolution (unless you buy the propaganda of those controlling it). Furthermore the only "revolutions" I can think of that were actually controlled or orchestrated are coups d'état which is a special kind of revolution. Unlike ousting a former government and installing just a new regime, the information revolution is about fundamentally altering our class system from the bottom up. It is directly applied to the masses and by definition is difficult to control (look at China have fun with that). The reason I balk at the idea that anyone could control this is that you can't even show evidence of the information revolution except by way of anecdotes (just examples) and socioeconomic trends in a vast populace (better). How do you control that which is hard to detect?
So I don't think you can control the information revolution (hence the reason it's called a revolution, it's happening whether those in control want it to or not). You can either let it happen or you fight it. And I feel like North Korea is doing simply the latter. Of course, the sentence from the summary bemuses me beyond most things I read
My work here is dung.
Propaganda isn't information.
Free Martian Whores!
Can you imagine what would happen to North Koreans if they allowed access to YouTube? Everybody would like to be like Psy.>)
They should allow access to the obvious North American news sites. The propaganda is already done for them. No worries ...
And this is what remains from the cold war. ... (And I'm not the only one)
I'm so lucky not to be born there
I think in the next 5 years time we'll be observing unification of North and South Korea, all signs are pointing in that direction. The North can provide plenty of unskilled cheap labor and the South will provide the capital, tools and management. AFAIC that's the best way to resolve that conflict, of-course there will be a problem of many high government officials accepting the terms, but I am sure they can be offered cushy enough sinecure positions of power until they retire. Somalia solved their communist problem with a bloody civil war. USSR fell apart and parts of it are reconstructed under authoritarian regime. Eastern Germany became a stone on the welfare system of the Western counterpart. Let's see if Koreans find a better way to deal with the unification process (hopefully they allow for a market solution to it rather than a central planning one).
MY OTHER COMMENTS
or goetsed etc
Dear Leader wish to remind all BBS user that upload ratios be strictly enforced for glory of True Korea and Worker Party!
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Cheap Tablets with limited 3G bandwidth and full access to the Internet. Let the real revolution start!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Lulz @ cptl$m. KrlMrx 4eva. Ma0 MTSBWY.
Oopa North Korean Style.
Could this be an opportunity for South Korea (or any other western government) to send their own daily propaganda text messages to phones in NK? All it would take is a fake cell site just over the border, on a (very high) flying aircraft/drone, or on a ship outside territorial waters. Having radio-based technology in the hands of the masses in NK can work for _and_ against the current government.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
you like the word sport.
Whats the URL? I wan't to sell them some cheap viagra.
text messages on a cellular telephone? Message boards and chat functions? Dear leader truly is a visionary! How long until the plebs in the rest of the world catch up? Oh they never will because next year North Korea will introduce a phone that has a camera in it! North Korea is the freest most technologically advanced nation on the planet!
Say what you want about the censorship itself, but at least the approach taken by likes of China and now North Korea's is more in keeping with the spirit of the Internet that some of the sweeping proposals coming from the more fundamental groups at the moment. Given that some content and topics are, for whatever reason, prohibited in a given area of the world (and some quite rightly so), I'd much rather have the Chinese / North Korean approach of "This is our section of the Internet, and we'll take responsibility for censoring it as we see fit while the rest of you can route around the damage and do want you want on your section." than the approach being proposed by certain other groups to block the whole lot, everywhere - including where it is a perfectly legal and accepted social norm.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Imagine, an *entire country* held captive and being brainwashed by political media. I hear North Korea is pretty bad too.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
An intranet reminds me of the good old days. Maybe NK should install Banyan Vines. Then they could have the B-mail snowball effect:
To: "*@*@*"
LUNCH BAG
Somebody left their lunch bag in the break room 2432.
To "*@*@*"
Re: LUNCH BAG
Don't send messages to *@*@*!
To "*@*@*"
Re: Re: LUNCH BAG
Hey you stupid people, never Reply All to *@*@*!!!
To "*@*@*"
Re: LUNCH BAG
I'm in the Singapore office. Where is this room 2432 you speak of?
To "*@*@*"
Re: LUNCH BAG
Hey you people, knock it off!
<strained 80286-based servers crash>
Imagine, an *entire country* held captive and being brainwashed by political media.
We've all seen this exact phenomenon happen in full force earlier this week.
Fuck the FSA.
I think it's no coincidence that all the major media players use exactly the same words to describe events. Case in point? The description of the election was "razor tight" was repeated everywhere. Now if this were a commonly used expression, I wouldn't have noticed. But this is a ridiculous and meaningless expression. what is "tight" about a razor? Nothing. Razors are sharp. Razors are thin. Razors are not "tight." But that the media repeated this across the board says a lot to me.
It says they are there to repeat what they are told to say and to use that repetition to drive the masses to think and believe in particular ways. And of course it works...
"Support the troops!" Right? It doesn't mean what I think it should mean. Of course it *does* mean that we don't reject them when they return from tours of destruction and unaccounted for "collateral damage" which may or may not include the killing of children or other innocents. It means we don't blame them for doing what they were told... or even if they were doing more than they were told. (Really, we don't know what they were told to do.) But that it should mean is that wounded fighters should have their lives taken care of for the rest of their lives... you know, like the congressmen, senators and presidents who sent them off into harm's way to do their bidding in persuit of their agenda. We don't do that. Our government has no interest in doing that. No one actually supports the troops in any meaningful way... in fact, on Veteran's day, the one "holiday" where *I* (a veteran of the first Iraq 'thing') should get recognized and the day off and all that, I don't. Who does? Banks, the postal service, some schools... Not me though.
"Support the troops!" means something else. It actually means "support our agenda unquestioningly" and that is exactly what has been happening.
This should not be a surprise. Communist can not win if you know what they are doing.
Note: Obama never lets us know his plans.
It's Pyongyang Style:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYBCgV6a5kE
I'm quite amazed to hear that there are over 1 million mobile phone users in North Korea. But, it gets me thinking about something else...
I travel a quite a bit, and very often in poor countries. Yet, everywhere I go I am continually surprised to see people living in tin shacks and questionable frequency of meals using mobile phones and having satellite TV dishes. It seems that the world over, people that can afford the least spend their money on totally unnecessary items where they would be better off spending that money on food, clothing or shelter.
Even in the ghettos of the U.S. where people are living in project housing, eating via food stamps, they have mobile phones(not just Obama phones) and satellite/cable TV. It indicates a level of ignorance that annoys me.
Go ahead and tell me what an ass I am for my views and how poor people should have these things. I just don't see it.
For years the closed cell network and intranet have been available in NK, long before Kim Jong Un was even known. They've slowly been adapting things from outside of the country for over a decade now, and even have their own versions of "burger joints". Youtube is blocked where I am, otherwise I'd post links to some videos on there showing them off. This is the same way North Korea has dealt with all technology. When radios were still the main source of media, they were given radios they could not turn off, that played propoganda and "party approved" music. When TV became inevitable they started giving televisions to upstanding members of the party, but they were limited to one channel only and it was illegal to tamper with it. I'm still interested to find out if anything will change in regards to available technology... Kim Jong Un spent lots of time outside the country and grew up with video games, dvds, and most likely, the internet.
The main difference is that it has become widespread to smuggle _real_ phones in to the country from China. They are also getting DVD's from South Korea via China. Many of them are now aware that the rest of the world is not the desolate backwater their government asserted it was.
Do they run at 9600 baud?
When all improvements are merely seen as proof of how bad the situation is, you miss out on the fact that there has been an improvement - however slight.
Remember what China was like 40 years ago under Mao? Remember the giant steps in which change happened? Right, me neither. Change is slow, incremental, imperceptile, even when it happens at the speed that China has changed. Just because they haven't crossed the finish line doesn't mean it's not a first step.
Really, you are a moron, what base tower are they going to connect to? Or do you think 3g is some kind of miracle magic internet thingy that just works anywhere?
Morons like this are on a tech site but know nothing about tech or reality. North Korea might have cell towers but they aren't connected to the rest of the world. All you will do in NK is you turn on a cellphone is give the position of someone who is going to spend sometime in a labor camp. Your cellphone won't connect but its position will be accurately enough determined through triangulation.
No doubt some equal noob is going to shout something about darknet or whatever cyber crap they heard but never understood. The reason you can hide things on the internet in the west is because nobody is looking. The easiest way to stop people from communicating is NOT to listen to what they are saying but to kill anyone who says anything at all.
In NK there won't be a crack team trying to break your encrypted mails, if you don't belong to the elite, you send an email, you die. End of story. You belong to the elite and they can't plainly see it as readable, they ask you through a rubber hose.
In NK there is no TSA to try to catch your out at the airport, they catch you at the airport, you die. End of story.
In NK there is no drone trying to see if you grow weed, you use electricity, your door is busted open to see what you are using it with.
This is a dictatorship, they don't ask why you are broadcasting, broadcasting ANYTHING is illegal.
Below some idiot talks about a mesh network... yeah because creating a netword of transmitters in a place nobody trusts each other is going to last anytime at all.
REALLY, this is supposed to be a tech site not a site for dweebs who heard a word and run with it.
THINK for a second what total control means. NK information comes in through the ass and goes out. Film rolls smuggled inside and if you survive the border, ANYONE finds out what you done, you are dead and your family is dead. This is a place where MILLIONS died and NOTHING happened. This is not a nice dictatorship like nazi germany, this is something the world has never seen before, total control.
Can just everyone on this site accept that ANY transmitter will be detected? This was true as long back as WW2. The only thing possible is to create a transmitter that requires practically no power, can be moved very fast and broadcast near instantly and it tiny. Then you might get out a burst on the go and not be found. And you would have to do that all the time in a country where if someone turns you in, they will eat something besides grass.
Dropping tablets with 3g? So dumb it really deserves not just mockery but vilification.
Que mod down by some butthurt noob whose teachers all told him he was special.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Lets load up drones with WIFI blasters and Satellite modems! Give them some real internet for a day! Oh, and paint Iranian logos on the drones!
North Korea is a walking talking Orwell country
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I can't help but feel we're failing as humans. Honestly, any reason to invade NK that gives those people freedom and the possibility of a better life is a good enough reason to me.
i wonder where the porn is hidden in that intranet ;]
This is fantastic. Once users are able to communicate freely and anonymously, and the schools and scientists appreciate the advantages of the medium, it will be just a matter of time until the North Korea intranet connects to the Internet, just as it did in China.
What is this global internet of Twitter and Facebook that you are talking about? I'm a happy user of internet even if I am not use either one.
In other news North Korea Finally invents a Spam solution for e-mail that doesn't fall pray to the standard checklist of reasons spam filters will fail.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Why doesn't North Korea just use some version of Apple's walled garden? It sounds perfect for them.
No one is permitted to criticize Israel.
The internet is not the global internet of Twitter and Facebook, but a government-crafted intranet that is restricted to just a tiny percentage of the population.
This sounds like the American (and worldwide) Internet until 20-25 years ago.
Remember, folks, Arpanet, NSFNet, and most of the other major pieces of what became the Internet was largely funded by US government dollars with heavy restrictions on what it could be used for. Outside of military- and government-use networks and "next-gen" research networks ("Internet 2," etc.), those restrictions were gradually lifted in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
I'm predicting North Korea will see its Eternal September and the beginning of the Spam era in about 20-25 years.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
In other words, it's sort of like AOL.