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North Korean Business Park Getting Internet Access
Daniel_Stuckey writes "A business park in North Korea will soon have (limited) access to the Internet, according to news reports. The Register wrote that an industrial park in the Kaesong Industrial Region will house Internet-connected PCs by the first half of this year. The Daily NK explained that the first step to connectivity will be an Internet cafe with 20 computers but afterward company offices will also be connected. They quoted a spokesperson from the Ministry of Unification — a department of the South Korean government that works on unifying the two Koreas — as saying, 'We are planning to launch the basic level of Internet services at the Kaesong Industrial Complex starting in the first half of this year,' and adding, 'Officials and employees in the North's border city will be able to use most of the online services now available in South Korea.'"
No thanks.
Have gnu, will travel.
I have dibs on the first SC and dota tea house!
Clarification needed.
Which North Korea's regime we are talking about. Original one or North Korea of United States.
One is in Asia, another on North American continent.
For anyone who is complacent or unconvinced about the value of the internet in terms of providing a meaningful political dialogue, political education, or otherwise serving as a tool of the people to at least aid in political expression, look at the places where it is controlled and how politically repressive those places are. If nothing more, it should show that attempts to restrict or regulate it may indicate that those parties attempting to do the restriction or regulation may not have your best interests at heart.
i always wondered if people in North Korea had internet access. do people in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea even have cell phones or 4G data networks?
Having been a bit of a North Korean watcher for a few years I don't think this will change much. There is already internet access available to certain groups of people in North Korea with restrictions applying to each group. Examples include:
Tourists who are allowed to bring in mobile phones, and for an exorbitant fee can have a North Korean SIM card with access to the wider internet - even less restricted than China's firewalled internet access
Certain students, academics and professionals may access the internet in a supervised format. Areas of research and specific websites must be submitted to a human monitor who must approve the sites and who remains in the computer room to ensure users only access what has been approved
And of course the higher level officials are assumed to have internet access
Other than that, the general population only has access to the North Korean intranet - which among other things has government sites, game sites and even a dating website. Any new access to the wider internet is surely going to come with very strict controls and monitoring.
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Dear Slashdot User,
Speaking for myself as AC but reflecting on everything.
This comment is about Beta and the revolt. If you're not interested do move on, sorry for the brief interruption and Thanks.
I'll start by saying surely there's folk bothered by the anti-beta floods. I apologize if it's frustrated anyone who wants normal discussion flow. The fact is there's some of us who feel (super) passionate about this drastic redesign. Nerd or Don Juan, whatever [buzzword that describes you]...it would take a lobotomized sociopath to not even feebly feel something unsettling about the yanking of the historic roots of this site we call slashdot.org. Whether 1997 or 2006 or 2010 was your first time around these woods... there's much to admire and appreciate.
My bias is that I am 101% anti-beta on all points including ease of use, functionality & decimation of dense threaded discussion. It's ugly and hideous to me on so many levels. I could go on with a list UI details, I'll push that aside for now.
What I'm here to say is that as unprecedented as Slashdot's rise was - equally unprecedented is the scene unfolding in the altslashdot/slashcott movement. For or against, let's pause to admit this truth.
I feel what needs acknowledgement of the anti-beta movement is the validity of our own emotions here. I think the most passionate grew up with this site thru many phases of their lives. It's not just about the news business. I view Slashdot as an unprecedented cultural icon. A bizarre and intriguing global public forum - delivered to us reliably at every request direct to our private, personal computers.
-From trolls to flamewars to humor to all the memes, prose & poetry, robot crap-flooding to real intelligent valuable discussion and debate-
(If there was all of 1, it wouldn't work. It was that they all got to play)
Don't let what some call "immature" anti beta flooding fog your perception of the movement that is altslashdot. We are 150 strong in the channel and rising. We are busy resurrecting a dusty time machine that is the Slashcode from a long, ill-destined slumber. In all ~16 years of this site's unprecedented growth and dull drifting into "irrelevance" - can you say the community has ever been this ignited? This united?
I watch Facebook and Google+ destroy persona. I watch Google+ destroy old Google. I watch numerous sites redesign into turgid-with-whitespace messes. For some reason, the decimation of old Slashdot kicks me the in gut harder than the lamest trends of 3.0 and SOME lame things of 2.0.
I'm not saying I have all the answers. I have questions, too. Malda, how could you leave your dear creation in such apparently heavily corporate non-community minded hands? Why not some sort of not-for-profit to keep operational? Anything to at least let it operate with self-respect and not have to morph into something so ugly that is Beta. Oh well, I'm not a tycoon how would I know.
Maybe it's just the last straw for some of us. I believe altslashdot of many things goes beyond Slashdot itself and represents the intangible kicked-in-the-stomach feelings of many as the Internet changes over time - in this case not for the better.
To conclude, disgust with Beta can be expressed in many shades of grey, black or white. A heroic and perilous historical movement is taking place, ##altslashdot being the core of its engine. We battle for our beliefs like never before in the face of a twisted, ugly monster (that is not only Beta itself the end product, but all that is that conceived its bastardly existence).
We are trying to launch a Slashdot of old into the modern world. Our mission is community and absence of pure profit driven design. There's no free lunch but Lord let there be potlucks!
And I encourage you to join not to support nor pan per say... but to simply witness an awesome part of history unfold. A rebirth. A reclamation.
It's not so much whether we fail or succeed. It's about believing i
No hope for 'muricans.
Another plot of evil capitalists to destroy the North Korean economy!
What do you do at the office if you can't procrastinate for 8 hours using partially open internet access?
F*** beta with a kimchee enema
Kim Jung Un invented it, after all.
#DeleteChrome
Glorious Leader permitting all searches including the terms "best" "Korea" "Glorious Leader" and "harmony." any other keyword, or connection to other sites, stunning "ocsic" router of Pyongyang Research and Cloning Institute will reject.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
All of your TCP packets need to be written down on a 3x5 card and hand delivered to the nearest government office for manual processing before being typed in and sent to uunet via dprkvax. This will lead to a tiny slowdown in network access, but nothing that you should notice.
Thanks for putting that information in concise way.
One more group that has to be added is government/army services involved in electronic warfare:
http://www.theguardian.com/tec...
As soon even freaking North Korean will have better and more widely available broadband access than the the US.
South Korean is wiring them, there is no way it'll be some slack-ass no competition monopoly running things that refuses to invest in upgrading their aging network just to squeeze profits higher this quarter for the shareholders.
Admittedly it'll be spied on more than your neighbor's mom with an open window and clear shower curtain taking her daily afternoon shower when the highschool kids are getting off the bus, but it'll still be faster, more reliable, and widespread than similar services in the US.
What do they make, oxymorons?
They quoted a spokesperson from the Ministry of Unification — a department of the South Korean government that works on unifying the two Koreas
First amazing that they even have this. Doesn't seem like they are really getting anywhere. What do they do from day to day? Call up NK and ask?
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Didn't they yank all the workers out of the business park a while back? I thought SK business were abandoning their ventures there?
Keep in mind, US sanctions against North Korea mean key technologies make it difficult to import computers. Although these days there's so many ways to get mobile devices that might be a moot point.
Last year we were in South Korea and we went on one of the popular "DMZ Tours". So, on the tour you go to Dorason Station, which is the jumping off point from South Korea onto the rail line into North Korea, and then after that you go up a hill and look into North Korea. From that overlook, you can see Kaesong, which I think is about 7 miles over the border or so.
My guess is that this is going to be a simple and highly restricted system. A lot of management is from South Korea, so they'll give them access. From there, the simplest way would be a straight wireless shot to South Korea, but maybe N. Korea can make a play to get their paws on the traffic.
Interesting factoid, North Korea's official GDP (not counting it's counterfeit currency, drug and arms trade) is about $12 billion. Of that, $2 billion comes from trade generated by Kaesong. So when North Korea cut off access to Kaesong, it effectively made the decision to shut down 17% of its economy overnight.
----- obSig
Slashdot Beta..........
when any story about getting basic Internet service is a big enough issue to get to /..
Yeah so really I am surprised there is any Internet service in NK
It's good, that people will access internet service and save time