As North Korea Opens Up Slowly, the Populace Gets Online Peeks of the Outside World

A picture of Ivanhoe e-book on a Chinese Samjiyon tablet in North Korea. Via instagram.

At TechInAsia, we haven’t covered much on North Korea. We’ve only gotten tidbits of the landscape. From Kim Jong Il’s grandson hiding from Facebook and Twitter to the Pyongyang Subreddit to the Google Maps view to the country’s first computer video game to North Korea via Instagram, we’ve seen quite a lot more of North Korea in the past few months that in the previous decades. Though locals are denied access to the real internet, they’re also getting more glimpses of what the outside world is really like.

So we’re especially jazzed to see that Buzzfeed has posted a really interesting piece on North Korean tech culture. They got to meet up with Jean Lee, a reporter for the Associated Press, who may be one of the first people to tweet out of Pyongyang thanks to North Korea recently opening up 3G access for foreigners. She’s currently focused on studying the small tech scene in the communist country.

Here are some of the key things you can learn from Jean Lee:

• North Koreans don’t get on the internet, they get on the intranet. And they use it to download sanctioned books, chat within walled-off forums, mostly in universities sharing songs and birthday messages. Honestly, it’s not that different from what we use Facebook for, if you add in some international news, and trolling.
• There are currently one million cellphone users. That means the population is already catching up to the rest of Asia with texting needy-ness.
• Self-censorship is common practice. Not surprising, honestly. That already occurs across online and offline media in China and Vietnam because of government restrictions and the repercussions of being too vocal.
• North Koreans can download e-books onto Chinese Samjiyon tablets to read.
• Some elite North Korean lab researchers can get online on the real “international internet”.

North Korea is an odd place. With the recent severance of the South Korean hotline coming just days after basketball legend Dennis Rodman vacationing with Kim Jong Un, I don’t know what to make of North Korea. But we can see that the North Korean web is growing already, though slowly.

So there are two now avenues whereby the general population can get glimpses of the outside world and the so-called international internet: foreigners carrying 3G enabled phones, tablets, and computers, and via the North Korean elite. Knowing the viral nature of the internet, these tiny glimpses will get bigger and allow locals broader glimpses of the rest of the world.

In Vietnam, where I’m based, a censored internet (and society) has given birth to a population that is cynical about outspokenness, but still possesses a thirst for the West and new trends. A similar trend occurs in China. China and Vietnam are the closest reference points we have to predict what will happen in North Korea next. These things made possible by an opening economy and internet that, compared to the slow pace in North Korea, split wide open very quickly. North Korea just might drift in this direction. But with a dictator involved, it’s anybody’s guess. I just hope they keep dancing ¹.

The post As North Korea Opens Up Slowly, the Populace Gets Online Peeks of the Outside World appeared first on Tech in Asia.