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A Close-up Look at North Korea’s Digital Map App
Since around 2017, North Koreans with smartphones have had a new way to navigate around Pyongyang. An application (app) called “길동무” or “Fellow Traveler” offers a directory of the city and hundreds of shops, restaurants, hotels and other locations and might be the closest thing the country has to Google or Apple Maps. The app…
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New Satellite Could Provide Internet Access to North Korea…Someday
North Korea’s attempts to block foreign information from the country could soon face their most significant challenge to date. After years of combating the smuggling in of information via USBs, SD cards and other portable data delivery devices, as well as jamming of radio and satellite signals throughout the country, a new type of telecommunications…
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Twenty Years of Mobile Communications in North Korea
Two decades ago this month, North Koreans in Pyongyang and Rason were the first in the nation to get a taste of cellular telephony. In a country where landline phones were still the exception rather than the rule, mobile communications had the potential to revolutionize the way people communicate. Data from recent interviews with North…
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North Korea’s Koryolink: Built for Surveillance and Control
Eavesdropping and network security were the top concerns of the North Korean government in the months before Koryolink, the country’s current mobile network service, was launched in December 2008, according to minutes of a May 28, 2008 meeting in Kuala Lumpur between engineers from the Korea Posts and Telecommunications Co. (KPTC) and Orascom Telecom which…
