DPRK Forum

I ran into this article regarding the campaign of Chung:

At a forum on IT policy in Seoul, he also pledged to offer cheap and fast Internet services to the North, if elected president.

“I learned the importance of IT through a recent reunion of separated families via video here,” Chung said. “I believe that the technology exchange can act like a blood vessel to connect South and North Korea.”

How? Cell phones, international periodicals, broadcasts and outside information are banned to the vast majority of North Koreans. With those things banned in the DPRK, how in the world does Chung plan to convince Kim Jong Il to allow Internet on a wider scale in his secluded worker’s paradise?

As from previous posts on DPRK Forum, the North has the Internet via satellite, and is limited to the policy elites. Also, the .kp domain is up and running with only a few sites. This is a nice feel good prospect, but that is about it. I do not see how this is going to work, how it is going to be hammered out, and of course, there is the cost. With that said, there are other obvious difficulties.

A vast majority of North Koreans do not have the barest of basic necessities such as food, medicine, housing or electricity let alone a computer. Sure, the infrastructure could be installed and more computer centers made (Some are already in North Korea), but what good will it do if the vast majority of folks cannot get outside information? Should human rights be considered before thinking about spending untold millions if not billions on Internet?

More on the Internet (older article)

But to the extent that students and researchers at universities and a few other lucky souls have access to computers, these are linked only to each other — that is, to a nationwide, closely-monitored Intranet — according to the OpenNet Initiative, a human rights project linking researchers from the University of Toronto, Harvard Law School and Cambridge and Oxford Universities in Britain.

A handful of elites have access to the wider Web — via a pipeline through China — but this is almost certainly filtered, monitored and logged.

This I was not aware of. I did know about the satellite link. The link also talks about the pipeline from China as well.

Some small “information technology stores” — crude cybercafes — have also cropped up. But these, too, connect only to the country’s closed network. According to The Daily NK, a pro-democracy news site based in South Korea, computer classes at one such store cost more than six months wages for the average North Korean (snipurl.com/DailyNK). The store, located in Chungjin, North Korea, has its own generator to keep the computers running if the power is cut, The Daily NK site said.

[...]

The problem is much more vexing for North Korea, Professor Zittrain said, because its “comprehensive official fantasy worldview” must remain inviolate. “In such a situation, any information leakage from the outside world could be devastating,” he said, “and Internet access for the citizenry would have to be so controlled as to be useless. It couldn’t even resemble the Internet as we know it.”

But how long can North Korea’s leadership keep the country in the dark?

Good question. Perhaps Chung should consider this as well. Because the North Korean regime relies on this Utopian view and keeping people away from outside influences, chances are, the normal populace will not have access to the Internet provided by the South.

Of course, there are no polls indicating whether the average North Korean would prefer nuclear arms or Internet access (or food, or reliable power), but given Mr. Kim’s interest in weapons, it is a safe bet it would not matter.

I would think the normal North Korean would prefer to have the latter than the former. However, that is just my opinion on the matter.