While North Korea has been keeping the strings in the Korean Peninsula tight over its nuclear program, a small window of freedom opened up in one of the world’s most oppressive and isolated states as North Korea’s sole mobile operator, Koryolink, announced on February 22 that foreigners in the country would begin receiving 3G data service before March 1.
This past January, Google chairman, Eric Schmidt, visited the country to discuss the benefits of free and open Internet, among other goals. At one point, he criticized the North Korean government for not allowing their citizens to have basic Internet access, forcefully noting that they would “remain behind” if they continued down their current path. He also noted that the current network setup by Koryolink already supported a million phones so it would be easy to implement data services for its current subscribers.
The mass North Korean populace has access neither to the Internet nor often with anyone from the outside world. Schmidt’s daughter, Sophie, maintained a blog covering their trip in North Korea and, at one point, noted that she gathered that “North Koreans are taught to believe they are lucky to be in North Korea” and that it appeared similar to “The Truman Show, at country scale”. While some do have limited mobile phone usage, access to the Internet is completely unavailable; when it is available, it is either to the Korean intranet in the universities or, if one is lucky enough to access the Internet, users are literally supervised over-the-shoulder. The lack of Internet is likely not the biggest concern to the well-being of North Korean lives, with food and other basic needs in routine mass shortage, but can open up citizens to ideas and education from around the world.
Koryolink’s move to allow foreigners access to their Internet services will give visitors the ability to communicate in a country where they only recently were allowed to keep their cellphones when entering. Unfortunately, this doesn’t help the country’s millions of citizens gain access to an increasingly important global resource but, hopefully, it is a stepping stone towards more personal freedom for North Koreans. If the citizenry can gain even limited access to the Internet, it may help the country prevent themselves from falling even further behind technologically and economically but, given the current state of the country’s leadership, it is more likely there won’t be much further change with respect to ordinary citizens.
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