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In North Korea, the Internet is only for a few
By Tom Zeller Jr. The New York Times
Published: October 23, 2006
NEW YORK The tragically backward, sometimes absurdist hallmarks of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea and in particular its leader, Kim Jong Il, are well known. There's Kim's Elton John eyeglasses and cotton-candy hairdo, for instance.
A newer, more dangerous sort of North Korean eccentricity registered around 4.0 on the Richter scale earlier this month - a nuclear-weapon test broadcast on state-controlled television.
But the stark realities of life in North Korea were perhaps most evident in a simple satellite image seen over the shoulder of the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, during a briefing Oct. 11. The image showed the two Koreas, North and South, photographed at night.
The South was illuminated from coast to coast, suggesting that not just lights but the other, arguably more bedrock, utility of the modern age - information - was pulsating through the population.
The North was black.
This is an impoverished country where televisions and radios are wired to receive only government-controlled frequencies. Cellphones were banned in 2004. In May, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranked North Korea No.1 - over Myanmar, Syria and Uzbekistan - on its list of the 10 most-censored countries.
At a time when much of the world takes for granted a fat and growing network of digitized human knowledge, art, history, thought and debate, it is easy to forget just how much is being denied the people who live under the veil of darkness revealed in that satellite photograph.
Indeed, while other restrictive regimes have sought ways to limit the Internet - through filters and blocks and threats - North Korea has chosen to stay wholly off the grid.
Julien Pain, head of the Internet desk of Reporters Without Borders, a group based in Paris, which tracks Internet censorship, put it more bluntly. "It is by far the worst Internet black hole," he said.
That is not to say that North Korean officials are not aware of the Internet.
As early as 2000, at the end of a visit to Pyongyang, Madeleine Albright, then the American secretary of state, asked Kim to "pick up the telephone anytime," to which the North Korean leader replied, "Please give me your e-mail address" - signaling to everyone that at least he, if not the average North Korean, was cybersavvy.
These days, the designated North Korean domain suffix - ".kp" - remains dormant, but several official North Korean sites can be found delivering sweet nothings about the country and its leader to the global conversation (an example: www.kcckp.net/en/) - although these are typically hosted on servers in China or Japan.
But to the extent that students and researchers at universities and a few others 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.
"It's one thing for authoritarian regimes like China to try to blend the economic catalyst of access to the Internet with controls designed to sand off the rough edges, forcing citizens to make a little extra effort to see or create sensitive content," said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University. The problem is much more vexing for North Korea, he 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."
But how long can North Korea's leadership keep the country in the dark? Writing in the International Herald Tribune last year, Rebecca MacKinnon, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, suggested that North Korea's ban on cellphones was being breached on the black market along the Chinese border.
And as more cellphones there become Web-enabled, she suggested, a growing number of North Koreans, in addition to talking to family in the South, will be quietly raising digital periscopes.
Of course, there are no polls indicating whether the average North Korean would prefer nuclear arms or Internet access, but given Kim's interest in weapons, it probably would not matter.
"No doubt it's harder to make nuclear warheads than to set up an Internet network," Pain said. "It's all a question of priority."
NEW YORK The tragically backward, sometimes absurdist hallmarks of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea and in particular its leader, Kim Jong Il, are well known. There's Kim's Elton John eyeglasses and cotton-candy hairdo, for instance.
A newer, more dangerous sort of North Korean eccentricity registered around 4.0 on the Richter scale earlier this month - a nuclear-weapon test broadcast on state-controlled television.
But the stark realities of life in North Korea were perhaps most evident in a simple satellite image seen over the shoulder of the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, during a briefing Oct. 11. The image showed the two Koreas, North and South, photographed at night.
The South was illuminated from coast to coast, suggesting that not just lights but the other, arguably more bedrock, utility of the modern age - information - was pulsating through the population.
The North was black.
This is an impoverished country where televisions and radios are wired to receive only government-controlled frequencies. Cellphones were banned in 2004. In May, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranked North Korea No.1 - over Myanmar, Syria and Uzbekistan - on its list of the 10 most-censored countries.
At a time when much of the world takes for granted a fat and growing network of digitized human knowledge, art, history, thought and debate, it is easy to forget just how much is being denied the people who live under the veil of darkness revealed in that satellite photograph.
Indeed, while other restrictive regimes have sought ways to limit the Internet - through filters and blocks and threats - North Korea has chosen to stay wholly off the grid.
Julien Pain, head of the Internet desk of Reporters Without Borders, a group based in Paris, which tracks Internet censorship, put it more bluntly. "It is by far the worst Internet black hole," he said.
That is not to say that North Korean officials are not aware of the Internet.
As early as 2000, at the end of a visit to Pyongyang, Madeleine Albright, then the American secretary of state, asked Kim to "pick up the telephone anytime," to which the North Korean leader replied, "Please give me your e-mail address" - signaling to everyone that at least he, if not the average North Korean, was cybersavvy.
These days, the designated North Korean domain suffix - ".kp" - remains dormant, but several official North Korean sites can be found delivering sweet nothings about the country and its leader to the global conversation (an example: www.kcckp.net/en/) - although these are typically hosted on servers in China or Japan.
But to the extent that students and researchers at universities and a few others 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.
"It's one thing for authoritarian regimes like China to try to blend the economic catalyst of access to the Internet with controls designed to sand off the rough edges, forcing citizens to make a little extra effort to see or create sensitive content," said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University. The problem is much more vexing for North Korea, he 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."
But how long can North Korea's leadership keep the country in the dark? Writing in the International Herald Tribune last year, Rebecca MacKinnon, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, suggested that North Korea's ban on cellphones was being breached on the black market along the Chinese border.
And as more cellphones there become Web-enabled, she suggested, a growing number of North Koreans, in addition to talking to family in the South, will be quietly raising digital periscopes.
Of course, there are no polls indicating whether the average North Korean would prefer nuclear arms or Internet access, but given Kim's interest in weapons, it probably would not matter.
"No doubt it's harder to make nuclear warheads than to set up an Internet network," Pain said. "It's all a question of priority."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/23/news/kornet.php
By Tom Zeller Jr. The New York Times
Published: October 23, 2006
NEW YORK The tragically backward, sometimes absurdist hallmarks of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea and in particular its leader, Kim Jong Il, are well known. There's Kim's Elton John eyeglasses and cotton-candy hairdo, for instance.
A newer, more dangerous sort of North Korean eccentricity registered around 4.0 on the Richter scale earlier this month - a nuclear-weapon test broadcast on state-controlled television.
But the stark realities of life in North Korea were perhaps most evident in a simple satellite image seen over the shoulder of the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, during a briefing Oct. 11. The image showed the two Koreas, North and South, photographed at night.
The South was illuminated from coast to coast, suggesting that not just lights but the other, arguably more bedrock, utility of the modern age - information - was pulsating through the population.
The North was black.
This is an impoverished country where televisions and radios are wired to receive only government-controlled frequencies. Cellphones were banned in 2004. In May, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranked North Korea No.1 - over Myanmar, Syria and Uzbekistan - on its list of the 10 most-censored countries.
At a time when much of the world takes for granted a fat and growing network of digitized human knowledge, art, history, thought and debate, it is easy to forget just how much is being denied the people who live under the veil of darkness revealed in that satellite photograph.
Indeed, while other restrictive regimes have sought ways to limit the Internet - through filters and blocks and threats - North Korea has chosen to stay wholly off the grid.
Julien Pain, head of the Internet desk of Reporters Without Borders, a group based in Paris, which tracks Internet censorship, put it more bluntly. "It is by far the worst Internet black hole," he said.
That is not to say that North Korean officials are not aware of the Internet.
As early as 2000, at the end of a visit to Pyongyang, Madeleine Albright, then the American secretary of state, asked Kim to "pick up the telephone anytime," to which the North Korean leader replied, "Please give me your e-mail address" - signaling to everyone that at least he, if not the average North Korean, was cybersavvy.
These days, the designated North Korean domain suffix - ".kp" - remains dormant, but several official North Korean sites can be found delivering sweet nothings about the country and its leader to the global conversation (an example: www.kcckp.net/en/) - although these are typically hosted on servers in China or Japan.
But to the extent that students and researchers at universities and a few others 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.
"It's one thing for authoritarian regimes like China to try to blend the economic catalyst of access to the Internet with controls designed to sand off the rough edges, forcing citizens to make a little extra effort to see or create sensitive content," said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University. The problem is much more vexing for North Korea, he 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."
But how long can North Korea's leadership keep the country in the dark? Writing in the International Herald Tribune last year, Rebecca MacKinnon, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, suggested that North Korea's ban on cellphones was being breached on the black market along the Chinese border.
And as more cellphones there become Web-enabled, she suggested, a growing number of North Koreans, in addition to talking to family in the South, will be quietly raising digital periscopes.
Of course, there are no polls indicating whether the average North Korean would prefer nuclear arms or Internet access, but given Kim's interest in weapons, it probably would not matter.
"No doubt it's harder to make nuclear warheads than to set up an Internet network," Pain said. "It's all a question of priority."
NEW YORK The tragically backward, sometimes absurdist hallmarks of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea and in particular its leader, Kim Jong Il, are well known. There's Kim's Elton John eyeglasses and cotton-candy hairdo, for instance.
A newer, more dangerous sort of North Korean eccentricity registered around 4.0 on the Richter scale earlier this month - a nuclear-weapon test broadcast on state-controlled television.
But the stark realities of life in North Korea were perhaps most evident in a simple satellite image seen over the shoulder of the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, during a briefing Oct. 11. The image showed the two Koreas, North and South, photographed at night.
The South was illuminated from coast to coast, suggesting that not just lights but the other, arguably more bedrock, utility of the modern age - information - was pulsating through the population.
The North was black.
This is an impoverished country where televisions and radios are wired to receive only government-controlled frequencies. Cellphones were banned in 2004. In May, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranked North Korea No.1 - over Myanmar, Syria and Uzbekistan - on its list of the 10 most-censored countries.
At a time when much of the world takes for granted a fat and growing network of digitized human knowledge, art, history, thought and debate, it is easy to forget just how much is being denied the people who live under the veil of darkness revealed in that satellite photograph.
Indeed, while other restrictive regimes have sought ways to limit the Internet - through filters and blocks and threats - North Korea has chosen to stay wholly off the grid.
Julien Pain, head of the Internet desk of Reporters Without Borders, a group based in Paris, which tracks Internet censorship, put it more bluntly. "It is by far the worst Internet black hole," he said.
That is not to say that North Korean officials are not aware of the Internet.
As early as 2000, at the end of a visit to Pyongyang, Madeleine Albright, then the American secretary of state, asked Kim to "pick up the telephone anytime," to which the North Korean leader replied, "Please give me your e-mail address" - signaling to everyone that at least he, if not the average North Korean, was cybersavvy.
These days, the designated North Korean domain suffix - ".kp" - remains dormant, but several official North Korean sites can be found delivering sweet nothings about the country and its leader to the global conversation (an example: www.kcckp.net/en/) - although these are typically hosted on servers in China or Japan.
But to the extent that students and researchers at universities and a few others 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.
"It's one thing for authoritarian regimes like China to try to blend the economic catalyst of access to the Internet with controls designed to sand off the rough edges, forcing citizens to make a little extra effort to see or create sensitive content," said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University. The problem is much more vexing for North Korea, he 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."
But how long can North Korea's leadership keep the country in the dark? Writing in the International Herald Tribune last year, Rebecca MacKinnon, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, suggested that North Korea's ban on cellphones was being breached on the black market along the Chinese border.
And as more cellphones there become Web-enabled, she suggested, a growing number of North Koreans, in addition to talking to family in the South, will be quietly raising digital periscopes.
Of course, there are no polls indicating whether the average North Korean would prefer nuclear arms or Internet access, but given Kim's interest in weapons, it probably would not matter.
"No doubt it's harder to make nuclear warheads than to set up an Internet network," Pain said. "It's all a question of priority."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/23/news/kornet.php