Tag: Internet

Imports of Smartphones Surges In North Korea

| January 31, 2015

North Korea may be importing these smartphones, but they are connected to North Korea’s internal Internet which still allows the regime to control what information the public can access:

North Korea’s smartphone imports from China surged to a record high last year, a sign of a growing number of people there being connected to the net, according to data released Friday.

North Korea brought in US$82.8 million worth of smartphones from China in 2014, almost double the amount recorded a year earlier, according to the Seoul-based Korea International Trade Association.

It marked the largest volume since 2007, when related data were introduced.

Imports of portable data-processing devices, including laptops, also jumped 16 percent on-year to $23 million in 2014 despite a 3-percent decline in the North’s overall imports from China in the year.

Around 10 percent of the communist nation’s 24-million residents reportedly use smartphones, with its 3G network run by Koryolink, a joint venture with an Egyptian company, Orascom Telecom. [Yonhap]

People living on border areas with China have long been secretly using cell phones off of Chinese towers so maybe some of these smartphone buyers will be doing the same thing to access the Internet as well.

How Many People Use the Internet in North Korea?

| December 26, 2014

The answer is, not much:

There technically is an Internet that only a very small fraction of the population, including government employees or select university students, can access.

When they do, they likely only go to about the 10 to 15 “government-blessed” sites that computers in the country would be able to access, which would inevitably be monitored, said Martyn Williams, who runs a North Korean tech blog.

“They’re quite good at self-censoring,” Williams told ABC News. “They know what sites they should and shouldn’t go.”

New government-approved sites are added “every few months” but some examples that have been accessible outside of North Korea recently include a cooking website with different recipes for rice.

The Korea National Insurance Corporation has a rotating slideshow of pictures, including one that shows snow-covered artillery guns.

“Not many people have used it but it’s a lot of smoke propaganda,” Williams said.

The websites with servers that are based in North Korea and are visible outside its borders end in the .kp domain, though there is an entirely separate intranet system that residents are able to access through some library and university computers, Williams noted.

“That for most people is the closest they’ve come to a computer,” he said.

Williams estimated that the number of people who regularly use the Internet in North Korea was probably somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 people, and since Monday’s attack took place in the evening hours local time, the number of people who noticed would be far less.  [ABC News]

You can read more at the link.

Kakao Defies Korean Government By Denying Access to User Data

| October 15, 2014

Kakao is now in the cross hairs of the Korean government:

KakaoTalk, South Korea’s most-used messenger app, has once again become the center of national attention, stirring up controversy over its announcement that it would not accede to laws allowing authorities to inspect its user data.

The issue over the platform’s privacy policy has split the nation, with some people posting online comments that its new security measures have been long overdue, while others accused it of arrogance and believing that it can operate above the law.

The legal community, however, seemed to be adamant that Daum Kakao’s outright defiance of the law would simply be illegal, and that it would face charges for obstruction of justice.

Although legal sources said that no company executives had been sent to jail for not immediately responding to prosecutors’ warrants, they had faced mounting charges as no prosecutors had shown to walk away that easily from any case or investigation.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link, but Kakao has been losing users to foreign companies because of the fear the government will be accessing user data.  Kakao probably thinks they have to take this tough stand to defy warrants in order to try and keep the users they currently have even if it means violating Korean law.  ROK Heads may remember that this whole issue began because the Park administration has started to crackdown on online rumors.  So to find out who is passing false rumors the government wants to access Kakao data of those passing them around.

South Korean Crackdown On Internet Rumors Leads to Use of Foreign Web Services

| October 6, 2014

Unless the Korean government wants to become like China and start banning foreign websites cracking down on Internet rumor mongers will never work:

South Korea’s president is cracking down on rumors in cyberspace in a campaign that threatens the popularity of Kakao Talk, the leading social media service in a country with ambitions to become a global technology leader.

Prosecutors announced the crackdown two weeks ago after President Park Geun-hye complained about insults directed at her and said false rumors “divided the society.”

That rattled users of Kakao Talk, a smartphone-based messaging app used by 35 million of South Korea’s 50 million people. It prompted a surge of interest in a previously little-known German competitor, Telegram.

Rankey.com, a research firm, said an estimated 610,000 South Korean smartphone users visited Telegram on Wednesday, a 40-fold increase over Sept. 14, before the crackdown was announced. The company said its estimate was based on a randomly selected group of 60,000 people it follows regularly.

On Friday, Telegram was the most downloaded free app in Apple’s App Store in South Korea. On Google Inc.’s store, Telegram was the No. 2 downloaded free communications app, behind only Kakao Talk.

South Korean users left reviews on Telegram saying they left Kakao Talk to seek “asylum.” They asked Telegram to add a Korean language service.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.