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North Korea To Enable Mobile Internet Access — For Visitors Only
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that the reclusive country of North Korea is planning to enable 3G mobile internet access. It will not be available to the country's estimated one million mobile users, however. The service will be available only to international visitors, who have been allowed to bring their own mobile devices into the country since January of this year. The decision comes shortly after Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said enabling 3G internet in the country would be 'very easy' during his recent visit there. Currently, North Korean citizens can only access a small number of state-controlled sites. Might this decision open the door for some of them to surreptitiously access the open net?"
Almost certainly just to troll for information... Like taking a laptop to China...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Might this decision open the door for some of them to surreptitiously access the open net?
Hahahahahaha! Yeah. Sure. Good plan if those foreigners want to get an up close and personal tour of the labor camps.
It will be just as monitored as everything else foreigners do in North Korea. 0 chance of information getting to the NK people.
Somebody goes there by their own will?
It's possible that we're witnessing a gradual sea-change in NK's politics.
Kim Jong-un was pretty much obliged to make a show of strength upon taking office - launching "satellites" and testing "nukes". This ensures that he doesn't get overthrown by his own people, or "liberated" by you-know-who.
Kim Junior has experienced the outside world, and he may well believe that it is in everybody's best interests, even his, to gradually open it up to his people. Time will tell.
Might this decision open the door for some of them to surreptitiously access the open net?
Seems like having a device which gives away your location to a brutally repressive regime, and using said device to access things that would get you and your extended family thrown into starvation camps might not be a good idea.
On the other hand, I have no idea what I'd do if I were a North Korean. Maybe look up the best way to make suicide look like an accident so your surviving relatives don't get thrown into those starvation camps for the crime of being related to someone who dishonored the country by killing himself?
With complete control over imports, the government is able to largely ensure that no 3G devices are available to subscribers. Even so, should somebody get their hands on a 3G handset, how would they go about getting service through the government-controlled provider without the government knowing about it? And, were that possible, given the very nature of cellular architecture, triangulation of rogue signals is so trivial and accurate that it is often used as an alternative to GPS these days.
I'd also like to add that anyone who even connects to a network in NK is a raging moron. It's bad enough that you went there, and worse still that you brought a personal electronic device, the data on which will no doubt be cloned by intelligence services, but it goes above and beyond stupid to do any kind of surfing across such a highly monitored network -- VPN or no. You are fooling yourself if you don't think that every packet is being recorded by the service provider's proxy, and you can win good money betting that anything of value will wind up in the hands of Chinese hackers before you even close your session.
I mean, even the great firewall of china allows users to access data outside of china (albiet with state filtering and what not).
I don't know if this is a good thing or not that they haven't got better access considering their penchant for building nukes and what not, but with better access to information outside their own borders they probably would have had a working missile system 5-6 years sooner. If not from simply having access to that kind of information from the internet, then the benefits of better education for the potential scientists in the country.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
Now you've made me all nostalgic for USENET.
P.S. We need to talk about your dosage...
Did you play too much sega cd growing up?
Yeah, I'd want to use internet on a device in a country where His Supreme Leader of Batshit Fucking Crazy reigns. That would be secure and trustworthy.
Then again, except for this publicity stunt (?) from Schmidt, I have no idea why most people would have any interest in going to North Korea.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...it is time for North Koreans to learn how to spoof their IMEI
Typically communist countries are enthralled in the idea of advancing technology almost to the point of obsession, but unless you count failing to implement 50 year old missile technology North Korea doesn't exactly make strides here (although they'll claim to have put men on the moon before the USA and have broken warp 5 barrier if you asked them, no doubt). North Korea is just a sad little excuse of a country. God forbid that they might have access to modern technology and be able to communicate with each other, then they might figure out how deeply broken their country is. Yet another day in "communist" paradise.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Boy, this is sure good news for visitors to North Korea. They should all be sure to take their private personal communication devices to North Korea. I'm sure that nothing will go wrong and the benevolent rulers of North Korea will respect the privacy of any data on the devices and the users communications and Internet access.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
There isn't a lot of detail mentioned in the article about exactly what will be done to prevent the locals from using all of their smuggled cell phones to access the open internet.
In the past the DPRK has made decisions that "give in without actually giving in". They didn't originally allow non state-owned businesses but they tolerated people selling in their own markets for example. This seems similar to me. There is a high amount of smuggled cell phones from China, but very few people have the official DPRK sponsored phones. This means there is a chance a sizable portion of the population there would get access to the real internet. I do realize however that this would likely be monitored in some way, regardless.
what will the roaming fees be like?
I wonder how they differentiate between the 'local' and 'visitor' cell phones. Hit F3 in the spreadsheet and search for your MEID? If it's not there, they register it and you get tagged as a visitor?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Last I heard, Kim Jong Un turned off the internet for the entire country. How can this be?
sudo make me a sandwich
And I thought the grammar in the e-mails from Nigerian Princes were bad....
sudo make me a sandwich
Of course it would be.. why would N (K) orea have to sp(i) on its own citizens? Be careful who you call, visitors.
Now it's finally worth it for me to go to North Korea. What would be the point if I couldn't check in to Pyongyang on Facebook?
In case you are not aware, the post is a satire of a fellow known as APK. The grammar used is modeled after APK's as you can see here. Or, you can just look around a bit and see some of his posts on here about the wonders of host files.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Greetings undercover CIA personnel, welcome to glorious leader's free wi-fi access. Please feel free to communicate with your contacts and login to accounts and databases in United States and Japan. All communications 100% encrypted by glorious leader himself, ensuring the utmost confidentiality in communications. Also, please friend and like us on Facebook.
Google APK Hosts File Manager. He's written a fucking application to manage your hosts file.
See here: http://www.singularityweblog.com/the-communications-singularity/
"...one out of the box idea worth trying is to cast smartphones into the ocean to wash up on the shores of North Korea with the intent to provide the means for starting a revolution..."
Someone needs to set this website up for visitors with a mission.