Neowin.net - N. Korea Wants Citizens to Be Tech-Savvy

N. Korea Wants Citizens to Be Tech-Savvy

Posted by configure on 26 December 2003 - 03:01 · 25 comments & 2065 views

North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, whose sayings are followed by his people with a religious fervor, has defined three types of fools in the 21st century: people who smoke, people who don't appreciate music and people who can't use a computer.

Small wonder, then, the communist state's elite are rushing to become tech savvy in the Internet age.

"In North Korea, a job with the computer is considered a token of privilege," said Tak Eun Hyok, a North Korean army sergeant who defected to South Korea last year. "Everyone wants to learn the computer, believing they can get good jobs."

After leading his impoverished country into the elite ranks of countries that can launch multistage rockets and build atomic weapons, the North's reclusive Kim has set his eyes on a new frontier: computer technology. Under his order, the North is now pushing its best and brightest to learn the new technology.

His campaign is making fitful progress, however, hamstrung by U.S.-led economic sanctions that block the country from importing the latest computer hardware, and slowed by North Korea's self-imposed ban on e-mail and the Internet, where seditious, yet eye-opening insights on the outside world lurk just a few mouse clicks away.

Nonetheless, the North's 1.1 million-soldier military, the backbone of Kim's totalitarian rule, has been quick to embrace the Dear Leader's new directives. Today, the military, down to the battalion level, receives orders by computer, Tak said in a recent interview.

News source: Newsday - N. Korea Wants Citizens to Be Tech-Savvy

Computer science tops the list of subjects young military officers and college students want to study.

"We get some of the brightest North Koreans in our projects," said Lee Kwang-hak at South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co., which has been outsourcing to Pyongyang's Korean Computer Center since 2000.

Samsung asks North Korean engineers to build software for Internet search engines and media players. But so far, their productivity is only about half that of Russian and Indian engineers assigned with Samsung projects, Lee said.

"Working with North Koreans, you feel like you are using a shovel to do a job you can do with an industrial earthmover," Lee said. "But they are working hard and eager to learn. We are there to secure the cream of North Korean brain power. For us, it's a long-term venture."

Free flow of Internet data and e-mail would be anathema to the North Korean regime, which has vowed to shut out "degeneration, violence, and corrupt sex culture" of the West. Although military units, cooperative farms and government agencies are rapidly installing computers, few ordinary North Koreans have computer or e-mail access. Televisions and radios come with channels fixed for government-controlled media.

"What would normally take a few minutes to send by e-mail now takes us three days to send to our clients in Pyongyang," said Kim Jong-se, an official at South Korea's Hanaro Telecom. "We have told them many times about the necessity and convenience of e-mail, but it falls on a deaf ear."

South Korea's EBS educational TV channel began broadcasting Hanaro's "Pororo The Penguin," a 3-D animation series, last month. It is the first cartoon show made in North Korea and broadcast in the South.

Hanaro sends its files by e-mail to its Beijing agent, which downloads them and send them in a compact disc to Pyongyang by air mail -- all because North Korea wouldn't do business through e-mail.

North Korea staged a trade show in Beijing in April last year to promote its software. Last month, it said it has begun an international e-mail service that "guarantees the privacy of correspondence," but revealed little detail. Outside visitors say that only a few North Korean organizations, such as tourism authorities, have e-mail.

"Although a late starter, North Korea is eager to do business involving computers," says Nelson Shin, head of the Los Angles-based KOAA Film Inc., which is making a $6.5 million animation film, hiring work from a well-known animation producer in North Korea, SEK Studio.

"They seem to be recognizing the computer as an important source of national power," he said.

Kim Jong Il visited software labs and high-tech hubs during his rare trips to China and Russia in 2000 and 2001. When then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang in 2000, he asked for her e-mail address. Under Kim's rule, North Korea has opened computer labs, made computer education compulsory at schools and even claims to have developed a drink for computer fatigue. In 2001, Kim declared he would "computerize the whole country."

"Kim Jong Il is the driving force behind all of this," said defector Tak, who now attends Seoul's Yonsei University as a journalism student. "The big change in my life is I can play a lot of computer games in the South. I play them every day."

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#1 Posted by 123_kid on 26 Dec 2003 - 03:22: I think it's really interesting what he's [Kim Jong Il] doing with computers in his country. I think he might be the most computer savvy leader of a country

(2 replies) #2 Posted by aem4162 on 26 Dec 2003 - 03:48: people are starving and he wants them to use computers?

#3 Posted by plasticparadox on 26 Dec 2003 - 07:49

You may find this interesting.

QUOTE

Meanwhile, in North Korea the lack of basic necessities, such as a reliable electrical grid, presents huge obstacles to creating an information-technology infrastructure, according to Peter Hayes, executive director of the Nautilus Institute, which published a recent study of North Korea's IT aspirations.

Trade sanctions -- not to mention North Korea's guiding philosophy of "juche," or self-reliance -- have further isolated the DPRK from the Internet and many technological advances, said Hayes.

As a result, North Korea has been assigned only two "class C" blocks of Internet addresses, none of which currently appear active, according to data from the American Registry for Internet Numbers and Asia Pacific Network Information Centre. The DPRK's limited connection to the Internet reportedly comes from satellite links provided by a company in South Korea, and by land lines from China.

Similarly, North Korea's designated top-level domain, .kp, never has been implemented. The nation has only a handful of websites -- the most sophisticated being an online gambling site -- none of which are hosted in North Korea. Servers in China and Japan host the sites.

While Net surfing is available only to a privileged few of the 22 million North Koreans, leader Kim Jong Il is said to be a big fan of information technology. The dictator surprised many when he asked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for her e-mail address during a historic visit in 2000.

Yet, despite being mostly disconnected from the Internet, North Korea reportedly has developed a vast intranet linking government offices throughout the country.

The DPRK has software development expertise that is "competent, if not world class," according to Hayes. He notes that programmers in North Korea's Pyongyang Informatics Center have done contract work for local governments and businesses in Japan and South Korea to develop a wide variety of software.

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59043,00.html

#4 Posted by ripgut on 26 Dec 2003 - 09:16: there stubborness is whats keeping them behind

(1 reply) #5 Posted by nookadum on 26 Dec 2003 - 09:26: How the hell are North Korea's citizens supposed to be tech-savvy when they don't even have a reliable power plant/station?

(4 replies) #6 Posted by dougkinzinger on 26 Dec 2003 - 13:27: KIM JONG IL IS THE DEVIL HIMSELF!!!!!

(1 reply) #7 Posted by VikingStorm on 26 Dec 2003 - 14:05: Whatever internet they get it will sure be censored as hell. A few months ago in a newspaper article, a North Korean was able to get out of there, and was surprised to see that North Korea was not the richest and most powerful country in the world as they were taught.

(1 reply) #8 Posted by Webgraph on 26 Dec 2003 - 17:02: I wonder what the situation would have been like if North Korea managed to invade the entire Korean Pennisula in 1950. Banning e-mail and Internet use is absolutely insane, but the sex culture, spam, and viruses are a serious problem and should be addressed.

#9 Posted by RauL on 26 Dec 2003 - 17:37: How the hell does he want ppl to use a computer , when they don't have electricity ?!?!

this is more or less so hillarious like the theory that N.Korea shut down the Columbia Shuttle, when they got no fuel for the rockets

#10 Posted by djze on 26 Dec 2003 - 18:03: Instead of computers and rockets and atomic weapons he should get food for his people goddammit

#11 Posted by Mr. Black on 26 Dec 2003 - 20:38: Gotta love them Communists - now I know why America was so afraid of them pieces of sh1t...

(1 reply) #12 Posted by Mashiki on 27 Dec 2003 - 02:15: Now if back in the day we'd have only seen something like this: "The USSR wants all citizens to be capitalist-consumers"

Nothing like an ideological wrench into the machine. Almost funny...until you start to actually think what countries like that actually 'are'.

#13 Posted by no-sweat on 27 Dec 2003 - 06:29: people who smoke, people who don't appreciate music and people who can't use a computer... people who say they have nukes and blackmail the world...

#14 Posted by Zeni on 27 Dec 2003 - 14:12

QUOTE

people who smoke, people who don't appreciate music and people who can't use a computer

He may be a nutcase, but I can at least agree with him on that.

#15 Posted by IntelliMoo on 28 Dec 2003 - 07:42: Who the F gives a S about that communist ******* A-H and what he wants to do for his otherwise tortured country. Long live wonderful South Korea!

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