The Information Age: North Korean Style 156
An anonymous reader writes "It seems cell phones and the internet have come to the reclusive nation of North Korea — albeit in a manner that you might not expect. North Korea now sports over a million cell phones, although calls are not allowed outside of the country and text messages come daily from North Korean authorities sporting government propaganda. The internet is not the global internet of Twitter and Facebook, but a government-crafted intranet that is restricted to just a tiny percentage of the population. The intranet is restricted to elites in North Korea with good standing. The intranet uses message boards, chat functions, and state sponsored messages; its use has also been encouraged among universities, technical professionals and scientists, and others to exchange info. An even smaller fraction can access the outside internet. All of this seems to be an effort to control the information revolution without losing authority."
Re:Airdrop cheap tablets like leaflets (Score:2, Informative)
Using what wireless infrastructure? You do realize that you need to connect to an Internet-connected base-station in order to access the Internet, don't you? Cell phones/tablets don't just connect to the Internet magically over infinite distances.
Re:A Revolution without Losing Authority? (Score:4, Informative)
SK should put a series of 200 meter high towers with ultra strength directional-antenna open wifi beacons along the DMZ.
Hi, could you take a seat over there? I'm here with BUTU's new reality TV show, "to catch a violator of the laws of physics," and the physics police are waiting outside. I just want to ask you a few questions. Do you think it is appropriate for a /. reader like yourself to just violate the conservative of energy like that?
(OK, jokes aside, the more gain an antenna has, the more directional it needs to be. Thus, if you had a 75dBi antenna [which would be impractically large for 2.4GHz], you would get amazing range but only in a very tiny area, and otherwise you would have no appreciable reception.)
Re:A Revolution without Losing Authority? (Score:5, Informative)
And quite rightly so? Hell, NK has a fake city set up that actively blared propaganda into SK via loudspeaker for years. Popped off some artillery at a SK island setting fire to buildings a couple years back. Oh, and kidnappings. That's the easy stuff off the top of my head. For SK to retaliate with free Wi-fi would, in comparison, clearly be an appalling violation of NK sovereignty!
Moron (Score:5, Informative)
Really, you are a moron, what base tower are they going to connect to? Or do you think 3g is some kind of miracle magic internet thingy that just works anywhere?
Morons like this are on a tech site but know nothing about tech or reality. North Korea might have cell towers but they aren't connected to the rest of the world. All you will do in NK is you turn on a cellphone is give the position of someone who is going to spend sometime in a labor camp. Your cellphone won't connect but its position will be accurately enough determined through triangulation.
No doubt some equal noob is going to shout something about darknet or whatever cyber crap they heard but never understood. The reason you can hide things on the internet in the west is because nobody is looking. The easiest way to stop people from communicating is NOT to listen to what they are saying but to kill anyone who says anything at all.
In NK there won't be a crack team trying to break your encrypted mails, if you don't belong to the elite, you send an email, you die. End of story. You belong to the elite and they can't plainly see it as readable, they ask you through a rubber hose.
In NK there is no TSA to try to catch your out at the airport, they catch you at the airport, you die. End of story.
In NK there is no drone trying to see if you grow weed, you use electricity, your door is busted open to see what you are using it with.
This is a dictatorship, they don't ask why you are broadcasting, broadcasting ANYTHING is illegal.
Below some idiot talks about a mesh network... yeah because creating a netword of transmitters in a place nobody trusts each other is going to last anytime at all.
REALLY, this is supposed to be a tech site not a site for dweebs who heard a word and run with it.
THINK for a second what total control means. NK information comes in through the ass and goes out. Film rolls smuggled inside and if you survive the border, ANYONE finds out what you done, you are dead and your family is dead. This is a place where MILLIONS died and NOTHING happened. This is not a nice dictatorship like nazi germany, this is something the world has never seen before, total control.
Can just everyone on this site accept that ANY transmitter will be detected? This was true as long back as WW2. The only thing possible is to create a transmitter that requires practically no power, can be moved very fast and broadcast near instantly and it tiny. Then you might get out a burst on the go and not be found. And you would have to do that all the time in a country where if someone turns you in, they will eat something besides grass.
Dropping tablets with 3g? So dumb it really deserves not just mockery but vilification.
Que mod down by some butthurt noob whose teachers all told him he was special.