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North Koreans to soon loose access to South Korean TV
South Korea’s impending closure of analog television broadcasts will cut off one of the few uncensored sources of information available to North Korean citizens. South Korea, like many countries, is coming towards the end of a transition from analog to digital broadcasting and ending analog transmissions region by region. The process began in August but…
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Diving into AirKoryo’s new website
It’s been a couple of weeks since Air Koryo’s new web site make headlines. Much has been written about the site, but not much of substance. A lot of the stories have noted the airline’s one-star rating on Skytrax, a web site which generates ranking from user reviews, although it should be noted there are…
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Japanese flat-screen TVs on evening news
North Korea’s main evening news bulletin reported on Saturday evening about big-screen Japanese televisions. The report was contained as one of the brief foreign news items sometimes included at the end of the program and followed reports about a speech made by the Russian foreign minister at the UN General Assembly and a protest in…
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Visiting Tokyo’s Korean Book Center
There aren’t many places in the world outside of North Korea that you can just walk in and peruse DPRK propaganda, but Tokyo’s Korea Book Center is one place that you can. It was a place I never managed to get to when I lived in Tokyo, so I decided to visit last week when…
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WFP video from Anju, Wonsan
In my daily monitoring of North Korean news and information I come across a wide range of material, much of it reported and posted by general-interest North Korean blogs like NK News or North Korean Economy Watch. From time-to-time I come across something that isn’t so widely publicized, usually with a tech-angle that I post on…
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Orascom CEO back in Pyongyang
The CEO of Egypt’s Orascom Telecom Media and Technology (OTMT), which owns 75 percent of North Korea’s sole 3G cellular operator, is back in Pyongyang, according to KCNA. [Updated. See below] The North Korean news agency said Naguib Sawiris arrived on October 4 with four colleagues. It provided a couple of pictures of Sawiris and…
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China modernized North Korea’s TV news
The sudden refresh of North Korea’s staid state TV evening news appears be thanks to help from China’s state TV broadcaster. China Central Television, the government-run broadcaster of China, donated 5 million yuan (about US$800,000) of equipment to North Korea’s Korea Central Television to help improve its news broadcasts, according to a Chinese news report. There…
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More from the Pyongyang trade fair
Earlier I wrote about a new Android tablet computer called Samjiyon that was on show at the 8th Pyongyang Autumn International Trade Fair. Some of the images came from a KCNA video that also included some other highlights from the fair, including other pieces of technology. The fair lasted from Monday to Thursday and including, according…
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Samjiyon Android tablet debuts at Pyongyang trade fair
A North Korean company says it has developed a tablet computer based on Google’s Android operating system, according to reports from the 8th Pyongyang Autumn International Trade Fair currently taking place. There’s little actual information on the tablet computer, which was shown in photo coverage by the Associated Press and North Korean state TV. It’s made…
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Pyongyang Maternity Hospital gets advanced Siemens scanners
If you watch North Korea’s evening news for any number of days, you’ll usually come across medical features that show the inside of hospitals and the pictures are never particularly inspiring. Few modern machines are seen and the medical system certainly doesn’t rely on technology to the same extent as many developed nations. So it…
