North Korea, in other words, is largely behind China's Great Firewall. However, North Korea also appears to have routed some internet connections through satellite-based systems : those have included the Russian satellite company SatGate and a Hong Kong—based satellite network run by China's state-owned internet provider. There are also long-running rumors of a second, secret North Korean T1 line that patches in the most elite officials' devices at much higher speeds and that resolves as Chinese IP addresses.
If you saw the real internet in North Korea, it would almost certainly be running on a top-of-the-line computer — or even an Apple device such as an iPad or iPhone — which are smuggled in for the use of elite officials.
It would likely be quite slow; all of North Korea's devices share a very small amount of bandwidth and run through aging equipment that goes down often.
Not everyone who can access the internet in North Korea is a member of the elite. The country runs some departments that simply need access to the web to do their jobs, namely propagandists and other media specialists as well as hackers and a small number of technocratic researchers.
In order to prevent these people from trying to defect when they learn how hellish their country is compared with the rest of the world — or, worse, spreading what they learn to other North Koreans — jobs that require internet access typically come with lavish salaries, high-end government housing, and lots of prestige.
Either you are granted access to the internet because you are very elite, or you are granted elite status because of your internet access, but the two always go hand in hand. This question — why? There are, very broadly speaking, three kinds of internet connections between North Korea and the outside world. This revealing list of reasons one might have web access speaks volumes about the country's priorities.
The first and largest is propaganda: North Korea has graduated in recent years from the text-only rants of state media to surprisingly high-touch social media campaigns, including a steady stream of YouTube videos extolling the greatness of Kim Jong Un and the evils of the American imperialist dogs.
North Korea does not have "hundreds of millions" of supporters abroad, as it claims, but it does have a real and important, if small, base of supporters in South Korea and among the ethnic Korean minority in Japan. It also wants to reach its non-supporters abroad, though whether North Korea thinks its propaganda might be earnestly believed or is just hoping to further gin up international tensions with its regular threats is debatable.
The second reason North Korea wants to access the internet is hacking. The country has aggressively grown its cyberwar divisions in recent years into a few thousand highly trained hackers.
It uses cyberattacks as a sort of asymmetrical warfare; North Korea knows it would lose any real battles against much-stronger South Korea and the US, but it can still cause mayhem online and has been attacking US and South Korean online institutions for years. This is meant as a deterrent of sorts: don't step on our toes or we'll hack you. There are also reports of North Korea using the web to run various money-producing frauds to bring in hard currency to a government that badly needs it.
But the third reason is less straightforward. North Korea's very top elite, the inner core of the inner core, access the internet because they simply don't live in the same universe as their countrymen.
While most of North Korea exists in a propaganda bubble where any outside information is an existential ideological threat and truth about the world is scarce, North Korea's top elite are perfectly aware of how it all really works.
They allow themselves all the comforts: movies, books, internet access, forbidden technology, forbidden luxury goods, and foods and alcohol smuggled in for their pleasure. Kim Jong Un certainly participated in this, although it's also a tool by which he maintains the loyalty of the elite. The country's elites also do need this information — what's really happening out there, how the world really works — to run their country, even if they are only running it to keep the cruel, despotic system in place.
There have been some objections that whoever shut down North Korea's internet in December, whether it was the United States or someone else, unfairly punished an entire country just for the bad behavior of its government. The truth, though, is that the internet in North Korea is not a public good, nor even a good the public is aware of. About Us. B2B Publishing. Business Visionaries. Hot Property. Times Events. Times Store. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options.
Employees of Korea Internet Security Center work after computer networks at two major South Korean banks and three top TV broadcasters were hacked in Speculation centered on North Korea, with experts saying a cyberattack orchestrated by Pyongyang was probably to blame. By Barbara Demick. Barbara Demick. It often indicates a user profile. Log out. US Markets Loading H M S In the news.
Dave Smith. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. This is the startup screen when you first boot up Red Star 3. When installing Red Star 3, you're prompted to select a city for your time zone.
Interestingly enough, Seoul, South Korea, isn't an option. This is the log-in screen. You're in! Past versions looked more like Windows XP.
0コメント