North Korea Blocks Data Access For Foreigners

According to Reuters, foreigners in North Korea who formerly had online access via the country's 3G network have now been blocked from using it, in the wake of a fire at Pyongyang's Koryo Hotel, though it was not immediately clear whether the two events are related. Vox.com has an interesting look into what internet access is like for North Koreans, but as the linked Reuters report explains, access is in general much freer for residents as well as visiting foreigners.

Comments

Wow

[Travis Mansbridge]

North Korea provided internet access for foreigners?

Re:Wow

[thisisauniqueid]

Yes, foreigners have had Internet access for about 3 years now. (There are a few hundred foreigners posted in North Korea at any given time.) Of course network traffic is monitored, and everyone using the network knows that, but journalists visiting North Korea have used the network to get stories out quickly.

There are two different cellphone networks in the country -- the network used by locals, with up to 2 million subscribers already, and with only country-wide intranet access, and the network used by foreigners. You can't place calls between the two networks, and the phones on the two networks look different, so that North Korean minders can easily spot a local using a foreign cellphone illegally.

Re:Wow

[operagost]

Nazi rule in Europe

Yup

Communist China's cultural revolution

Definitely.

and segregation in the USA

Which one of these is not like the others? I mean, besides segregation being nowhere near the greatest evil in history, American segregation wasn't even that impressive. Have you even heard of South Africa? They were so worried about foreign challenges to their way of life that there were no TV stations there until the 1970s. The cultural turnaround was remarkable.

Re:Wow

[Ol Olsoc]

I mean, besides segregation being nowhere near the greatest evil in history, American segregation wasn't even that impressive.

This is slashdot, and some here just have to make everything worse in 'murrica.

The fun is calling them on it, and watching their stories get dumber and dumber.

Segregation, especially in the south was plenty bad enough in itself, and a national embarassment, but trying to compare it in scope to the holocaust shows a remarkable level of dumfuk.

Koryo

[Whiteox]

So the Koryo hotel catches fire and the Koryolink internet service goes down.
I wonder if there is a connection here somewhere?

Re:Koryo

[thisisauniqueid]

Actually, Koryo (Goryeo) is the name of one of the most important and longest Korean dynasties, following Silla, Baekje and Gogoreyeo. It's where the English name "Korea" comes from. A lot of things have the name "Koryo" in North Korea, and some things in South Korea. The North Korean name for Korea is Choson, the name of the dynasty that was built following the overthrow of the Koryo dynasty.

The South Korean name for Korea is Hanguk, "country of the Han" (that's the Korean Han, which uses a different Chinese character than the Chinese Han character representing the Han people that fought the Manchurians). To a South Korean, "Choson" sounds like a very backward name for Korea. To a North Korean, "Hanguk" sounds like a label imposed by imperialistic invaders.

Re:Expect an updated U.S. travel advisory.

[linuxrocks123]

It is arguable that the US is constitutionally prohibited from restricting US citizen travel. Technically, during the Cuba travel ban, it was spending money in Cuba that was prohibited, not traveling there.

The US State Department already urges US citizens, in the strongest terms, not to travel to North Korea:

http://travel.state.gov/conten...

Anyone who does anyway is a fool.

Or it could have just been an outage...

[Porbes]

Not to let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy, but there was a fairly widespread outage around the same time that may well have been the reason, since they did say they were disabling it due service problems with their upstream provider.