North Korea’s Answer To The Iphone: No Internet Allowed

 

 

Photo Credit: CC BY 2.0

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Business Insider recently profiled North Korea’s answer to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, the government-approved “Pyongyang Touch.”

Innovation is everywhere…that we tell you

It is unclear how much benefit users derive from the phone, as Internet is banned in the east Asian dictatorship. But there is a government-controlled intranet, which you can access with a 3G network.

“How nice to see hand phones being successfully produced with indigenous technology,” Kim Jong Un reportedly said when touring a “hand phone” factory in 2013.

One Japanese blog reported that the phone is not indigenous technology but likely a Chinese-imported “Uniscope” phone.

Kin Jong Un’s regime exercises control over the populace by severely restricting access to information. There are no outside newspapers or foreign films and people have actually been executed for watching and lending foreign DVDs. In fact, hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are regularly executed, jailed and sent to gulags for the most minor infractions. Despite the strict government control, in recent years, USB sticks or micro SD cards have become popular for sharing foreign videos, games, music and ebooks.

Tourists in North Korea can access the global Internet, but their SIM cards are deactivated when they leave so that local residents don’t get hold of them, according to Reuters.

Cellphones were banned until a few years ago but now an estimated 10 percent of the population supposedly possesses them.

But according to a recent a research report on mobile phone usage trends in North Korea conducted jointly by Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and Kim Yeon-ho, a journalist at the Voice of America (VOA), the government control of the country is so strong that even the widespread adoption of smart phones is not likely to lead to a “North Korean Spring.”