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IT business delegation to visit DPRK

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

October 20-27, 2007 (Beijing/Pyongyang)
GPI Consulting

GPI Consulting (Netherlands) is one of the few western companies that has done an audit of the DPRK’s IT capabilitites and has published about them.

They are organizing an IT delegation to visit the DPRK this October. Here is their marketing flyer and itinerary: NK-IT-tour.pdf

From the Marketing Flyer:

North Korea offers interesting business opportunities in several fields, such as software development, production of computer games, animation and cartoons, data entry en digitization. In order to provide detailed information about the IT opportunities in North Korea, a unique IT Study Tour will take place from 20 – 27 October 2007.

The trip to North Korea will focus on offshoring in the field of IT and BPO (Business Process Out-sourcing). We expect participants from IT- and software organizations that are investigating offshoring, or from consultants researching new offshore locations. Companies interested in exploring a new potential export market are also welcome to join the tour.

Europe still lacks sufficient knowledge about the promising North Korean IT sector. The goal of the business mission is to give the participants detailed information about offshoring, and especially about the opportunities in North Korea. We will strive to have participants from large, small and medium sized companies taking part in the IT study tour.

In order to make a business trip of 7 days attractive, the delegation will visit various companies in Pyongyang in the field of IT, animation, cartoons, computer games and BPO. The business mission will have an informal character with a visit to a university and also with attention to cultural and tourist elements. The participants of the tour will meet in China (Beijing); after returning from North Korea, an extension of the stay in China is possible.

The organizer of this mission is KCC (Korea Computer Center), a major IT services provider in North Korea with offices in several cities, including Pyongyang and Beijing. The European contact for this business mission will be Mr. Paul Tjia, founder and director of GPI Consultancy, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Established in 1995, GPI Consultancy is a specialized Dutch consultancy firm in the field of offshore sourcing. It is regularly involved in IT study tours to various offshore countries in Asia.

Posted in Cell phones, Communications, Computing/IT, GPI Consultancy, Intellectual Property, Internet, Intranet, Korea Computer Center (KCC) | Comments Closed

Kim Jong Il’s Yacht, UNESCO, Golf, and the Taean Glass Factory

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

Now available on Google Earth!
(click above to download to your own Google Earth)

North Korea Uncovered v.3

Google Earth added a high-resolution overlay of the area between Pyongyang and Nampo. In it, most of the Koguryo tombs listed with UNESCO are now distinguishable. In addition, viewers can see the latest Kim Jong Il palace (including a yacht), the DPRK’s premier golf course, and the Chinese-built Taean Glass factory. I have also made some progress in mapping out the DPRK electricity grid.

This is the most authoritative map of North Korea that exists publicly today. Agriculture, aviation, cultural institutions, manufacturing, railroad, energy, politics, sports, military, religion, leisure, national parks…they are all here, and will captivate anyone interested in North Korea for hours.

Naturally, I cannot vouch for the authenticity of many locations since I have not seen or been to them, but great efforts have been made to check for authenticity. In many cases, I have posted sources, though not for all. This is a thorough compilation of lots of material, but I will leave it up to the reader to make up their own minds on the more “controversial” locations. In time, I hope to expand this further by adding canal and road networks.

I hope this post will launch a new interest in North Korea. There is still plenty more to learn, and I look forward to hearing about improvements that can be made.

Posted in Architecture, Automobiles, Aviation, Banking, Coal, Communications, Computing/IT, Dams/hydro, Education, Electricity, Energy, Football (soccer), Forestry, Gambling, Gasoline, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), Golf, Google Earth, Health care, Hoteling, Hwanggumphyong and Wihwado Economic Zones (Sinuiju), Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), Leisure, Library, Light Industry, Manufacturing, Mass games, Military, Mining/Minerals, Mt. Kumgang Tourist Special Zone, Railways, Rason Economic and Trade Zone (Rajin-Sonbong), Real estate, Religion, Restaurants, Sea shipping, Sports, Tourism, Transportation | 1 Comment »

North Korea Tech Transfer

Friday, July 20th, 2007

Wall Street Journal
Melanie Kirkpatrick
7/20/2007

Of all the evidence turned up by the U.S. concerning irregularities in the United Nations Development Program’s operations in North Korea, some of the most disturbing concerns the transfer of dual-use technology.

As reported last month, the U.S. has uncovered documents showing the UNDP procured and delivered to North Korea in May 2006 technology that could be used for military purposes: global positioning system (GPS) equipment, a portable high-end spectrometer and a large quantity of high-specification computer hardware. According to packing lists and confirmation receipts, the items were intended for a “GIS” — geographic information system — project.

The equipment “is the type of technology subject to (U.S.) export controls,” says a spokesman for the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which is responsible for issuing export licenses. So how did it end up in Pyongyang? It would seem more than passing strange that Commerce would have issued the requisite export licenses. The answer is: It didn’t.

U.S. officials, led by Ambassador Mark Wallace at the U.S. mission to the U.N., have spent a year looking into the UNDP’s operations in North Korea. Now, at the request of the State Department, Commerce searched its archives and found no record of any application for export licenses for the GPS, spectrometer or other equipment for the GIS project in North Korea.

Over the past 10 years, Commerce has received more than 200 license applications to export U.S. technology for U.N. projects in North Korea. Of those applications, the UNDP was named in a grand total of two, including one for software for the same GIS project that was equipped last year. That application was rejected.

Previously undisclosed documents show that the UNDP had been trying to equip the GIS project since at least 1999, when the application for an export license for mapping software was denied. Commerce cited concerns over the lack of safeguards in the project that could result in the software being diverted to the North Korean government and used for military purposes.

Yet seven years later, the UNDP procured and transferred sensitive technology to the same, unsafeguarded project — this time without bothering to apply for a license. And while there’s no evidence the UNDP went ahead and purchased the software for which it had been denied a license, that possibility must be considered, since GPS equipment is useless in such a project without mapping software.

The denial notice for “Case Number: Z177037” is dated Sept. 18, 1999. The “consignee in country of ultimate destination” is listed as the UNDP in Pyongyang. The one-page notice is written in prose that is clear and unambiguous: “The Department of Commerce has concluded that this export would be detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests.”

The 14 items on the UNDP’s wish list were all classified “EAR99,” which means they are subject to Commerce jurisdiction but didn’t specifically appear on the Commerce Control List of items restricted for export. In discussions over the past several weeks with State Department officials, Commerce officials who examined the archives explained their agency’s decision to deny the export license. During the interagency review of the UNDP request, they say, questions were raised about whether the software would stay in North Korea after the UNDP international staff left and whether North Koreans would have access to the software.

Supporting documents show that the answer to both questions was yes. A letter dated April 5, 1999, from the software manufacturer that was seeking the export license on behalf of the UNDP, explains: “The project is supposed to be completed in three (3) years and the software will be left with the state agencies.”

Emails from the UNDP to Commerce offer further information about the UNDP’s security controls — or lack thereof. An Aug. 3, 1999 email from the UNDP’s Shankar Manandhar, in response to a Commerce query, says, “We would like to inform you that the North Korean nationals will have access to the computer in the project office in [the] presence of UNDP staff.” In another email, Mr. Manandhar notes that the software will be “utilized in the project office.”

The Defense Department recommended to Commerce that the application be denied. In a memo dated July 20, 1999, Defense explains that “These items could pose both national security and proliferation issues for the US and allies if diverted to the North Korean military.” Among the list of potential military applications cited are “planning a nuclear weapons infrastructure or missile launch sites.” And, “it could also be used for targeting.” In the end, as one Commerce official explained, since this type of mapping software can be used for military purposes, it was deemed to be “too great a risk of diversion.”

The Commerce official also says the case notes for the denial specify that several earlier licenses granted to the UNDP in North Korea had been conditioned in such a way that no North Korean nationals were to have access to the licensed items. Oh, really? Based on the UNDP’s replies to Commerce’s questions regarding the 1999 application, the official says that the licensing officer at the time believed it was “highly likely” that the UNDP was violating the terms of its previous licenses by allowing North Koreans access to licensed items. We now know — as confirmed by the U.N.’s preliminary audit of the UNDP’s North Korea operations — that the agency’s local staff were Ministry of Foreign Affairs employees assigned to the UNDP by the government.

It’s also worth noting the year these events took place: 1999. That is, the denial notice originated in Bill Clinton’s Commerce Department, part of an administration that was “conducting a one-sided love affair with North Korea,” in the felicitous phrase of Christopher Cox, then a Republican congressman closely monitoring Asian issues. On Sept. 17, 1999, the day before the issuance of the denial notice, the administration announced it would ease economic sanctions on North Korea. But approving the sale of sophisticated mapping software was a bridge too far even for the Clinton administration.

Since the U.S. went public in January with evidence of the UNDP’s lack of oversight of its programs in North Korea, the agency hasn’t exactly been forthcoming. At first, the UNDP denied that it had purchased dual-use equipment for North Korea, referring instead to “rice husk removers” and “plotters to help the [Korean] authorities more accurately produce maps for environmental monitoring.”

Next it look the line that the GPS equipment, portable spectrometer and computers delivered in May 2006 “do not represent state-of-the-art technology,” as Ad Melkert, the No. 2 UNDP official, put it in a June 28 letter to Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. An annex to Mr. Melkert’s letter describes the technology as “not high-end or sophisticated” — an assessment at odds with the representations of the manufacturers. Trimble, for example, maker of the GPS GeoXT Handheld sent to North Korea, describes its product as having “a powerful 416 MHz processor running the most-advanced operating system available.” Mr. Melkert says in the annex that the UNDP is investigating “whether the vendors [in the Netherlands and Singapore] were required to obtain export permits for these items” — which sure sounds like an effort to shift responsibility.

Since January, when the U.S. concerns were made public, the UNDP has pulled out of North Korea and the U.N. audit has confirmed extensive violations of U.N. rules regarding hiring practices, the use of foreign currency and site inspections. The latest U.S. revelations raise far more serious questions about the UNDP’s oversight. Under the most generous interpretation, the agency was negligent of its legal responsibilities to keep dual-use technology out of a country that is on the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring states. At worst, it deliberately transferred the technology, knowing it was breaking U.S. law and helping to strengthen Kim Jong Il’s military dictatorship.

These questions — and many more concerning the UNDP’s record in North Korea — highlight the need for an independent, external inquiry of the UNDP’s programs world-wide. The U.S. first went public with its concerns in January, after months of pressing the UNDP for more transparency. If anything, as the latest U.S. evidence shows, things are worse than anyone thought.

Ms. Kirkpatrick is a deputy editor of the Journal’s editorial page.

Posted in Communications, Computing/IT, International Aid, Singapore, UN, UNDP, USA | Comments Closed

North Korea ready to learn from the outside world

Friday, July 13th, 2007

New Zealand Herald (hat tip DPRK Studies)
David McNeill
7/13/2007

North Korea is set to take a potentially giant leap out of the intellectual cold with the construction of a new all-English language university staffed by academics from around the world and teaching the cream of the country’s graduate students.

Construction of the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology is nearing completion on a 100ha plot leased by the People’s Army in the North’s capital. The Army has loaned 800 solders to build the campus, which is largely funded by a network of Christian evangelicals.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is believed to have personally ordered the site cleared for use and granted the university the right to hire staff from anywhere in the world.

The university is expected to eventually have 2600 undergraduate and postgraduate students and to help train a new generation of elite business executives and technicians.

The project’s leaders in South Korea and the United States are playing down its potential impact for fear of spooking the North’s jittery authorities, but agree that it represents potentially a seismic shift in the reclusive state’s largely frozen relations with the rest of the planet.

“It will be the country’s first international university,” said Professor Chan Mo Park, co-chair of the university and a prominent Seoul scientist.

“The North has good universities but they don’t communicate with the rest of the world. This will let everyone know that the capacity of their scientists is very high.”

Despite crumbling facilities, Pyongyang’s standards of computer science, software and applied mathematics are world-class, say experts, and its youth are bursting with pent-up business energy. The university is expected to generate spin-off businesses and eventually a Silicon Valley-style business park.

The faculty of 45 will offer an MA in business administration as well as courses on information technology and agriculture to an initial cohort of about 150 students recruited from the country’s top research institutions.

Given the scale of foreign involvement and the money poured into the new campus so far, those involved say they are confident it will open its first research laboratories this autumn and its doors to students next spring.

But the legendary unpredictability of the Kim Jong-Il government could still throw a spanner in the university’s works.

Posted in Computing/IT, Education, Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, Religion | 1 Comment »

Software Center to Be Created in NK

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

Korea Times
Kim Tae-gyu
6/27/2007

A private association composed of South Korea’s major software developers plans to establish software centers in Pyongyang and Gaeseong late this year.

The Korea Software Financial Cooperative (KSFC) said Wednesday that it aims to sign a contract on the centers with its northern counterpart, Samcholli General Corp., this summer.

Such high-profile software companies as Samsung SDI, LG CNS, SK C&C and PosData are members of the Seoul-based association together with about 1,000 other outfits.

“We visited Pyongyang last week and agreed in principle to set up software centers in the capital city and Gaeseong Industrial Park,” KSFC official Kim Seok-hyun said.

“We are now ironing out details. The best scenario is that we ink an agreement in July or August to open the centers late this year,” said Kim who heads the North Korean project.

The envisioned centers will hire North Korean technicians and will come up with various computer programs demanded by 1,000-plus members of the KSFC.

“High-tech employees at the centers will develop software that will be used in the South or shipped out of the country,” Kim said. “The facilities are not symbolic ones aimed at improving the South-North relationship.”

Kim added the contract will be a win-win for the two Koreas that have been divided over the past half-century.

“We will be able to create software at much lower prices thanks to the cheap but experienced work force of the North rather than finding a low-wage platform in other countries,” Kim said.

“In comparison, the North will earn dollars through the partnership as well as give its engineers an opportunity to learn advanced technology,” he said.

In the long run, Kim said the software centers will roll out products, which were ordered by foreign companies to South Korean firms.

This is not the first time that a South Korean company attempted to take advantage of software-producing skills and know-how of the Northern engineers.

KT, the South’s top fixed-line telecom operator, started developing sophisticated software via an outsourcing contract with Samcholli General Corp. in 2005.

Posted in Computing/IT, Foreign direct investment, Korea Software Financial Cooperative (KSFC) | Comments Closed

North Korea’s IT revolution

Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

Asia Times
Bertil Lintner
4/24/2007

The state of North Korea’s information-technology (IT) industry has been a matter of conjecture ever since “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il famously asked then-US secretary of state Madeleine Albright for her e-mail address during her visit to the country in October 2000.

The answer is that it is surprisingly sophisticated. North Korea may be one of the world’s least globalized countries, but it has long produced ballistic missiles and now even a nuclear arsenal, so it is actually hardly surprising that it also has developed advanced computer technology, and its own software.

Naturally, it lags far behind South Korea, the world’s most wired country, but a mini-IT revolution is taking place in North Korea. Some observers, such as Alexandre Mansourov, a specialist on North Korean security issues at the Honolulu-based Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS), believes that in the long run it may “play a major role in reshaping macroeconomic policymaking and the microeconomic behavior of the North Korean officials and economic actors respectively”.

Sanctions imposed against North Korea after its nuclear test last October may have made it a bit more difficult for the country to obtain high-tech goods from abroad, but not impossible. Its string of front companies in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan are still able to acquire what the country needs. It’s not all for military use, but as with everything else in North Korea, products from its IT industry have both civilian and non-civilian applications.

The main agency commanding North Korea’s IT strategy is the Korea Computer Center (KCC), which was set up in 1990 by Kim Jong-il himself at an estimated cost of US$530 million. Its first chief was the Dear Leader’s eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, who at that time also headed the State Security Agency, North Korea’s supreme security apparatus, which is now called the State Safety and Security Agency.

Functioning as a secret-police force, the agency is responsible for counterintelligence at home and abroad and, according to the American Federation of Scientists, “carries out duties to ensure the safety and maintenance of the system, such as search for and management of anti-system criminals, immigration control, activities for searching out spies and impure and antisocial elements, the collection of overseas information, and supervision over ideological tendencies of residents. It is charged with searching out anti-state criminals – a general category that includes those accused of anti-government and dissident activities, economic crimes, and slander of the political leadership. Camps for political prisoners are under its jurisdiction.”

In the 1980s, Kim Jong-nam studied at an international private school in Switzerland, where he learned computer science as well as several foreign languages, including English and French. Shortly after the formation of the KCC, South Korean intelligence sources assert, he moved the agency’s clandestine overseas information-gathering outfit to the center’s new building in Pyongyang’s Mangyongdae district. It was gutted by fire in 1997, but rebuilt with a budget of $1 billion, a considerable sum in North Korea. It included the latest facilities and equipment that could be obtained from abroad. According to its website, the KCC has 11 provincial centers and “branch offices, joint ventures and marketing offices in Germany, China, Syria, [the United] Arab Emirates and elsewhere”.

The KCC’s branch in Germany was established in 2003 by a German businessman, Jan Holtermann, and is in Berlin. At the same time, Holtermann set up an intranet service in Pyongyang and, according to Reporters Without Borders, “reportedly spent 700,000 euros [more than US$950,000] on it. To get around laws banning the transfer of sensitive technology to the Pyongyang regime, all data will be kept on servers based in Germany and sent by satellite to North Korean Internet users.” Nevertheless, it ended the need to dial Internet service providers in China to get out on the Web.

Holtermann also arranged for some of the KCC’s products to be shown for the first time in the West at the international IT exhibition CeBIT (Center of Office and Information Technology) last year in Hanover, Germany. The KCC’s branches in China are also active and maintain offices in the capital Beijing and Dalian in the northeast.

Another North Korean computer company, Silibank in Shenyang, in 2001 actually became North Korea’s first Internet service provider, offering an experimental e-mail relay service through gateways in China. In March 2004, the North Koreans established a software company, also in Shenyang, called the Korea 615 Editing Corp, which according to press releases at the time would “provide excellent software that satisfies the demand from Chinese consumers with competitive prices”.

Inside North Korea, however, access to e-mail and the Internet remains extremely limited. The main “intranet” service is provided by the Kwangmyong computer network, which includes a browser, an internal e-mail program, newsgroups and a search engine. Most of its users are government agencies, research institutes, educational organizations – while only people like Kim Jong-il, a known computer buff, have full Internet access.

But the country beams out its own propaganda over Internet sites such as Uriminzokkiri.com, which in Korean, Chinese, Russian and Japanese carries the writings of Kim Jong-il and his father, “the Great Leader” Kim Il-sung, along with pictures of scenic Mount Paekdu near the Chinese border, the “cradle of the Korean revolution”, from where Kim Il-sung ostensibly led the resistance against the Japanese colonial power during World War II, and where Kim Jong-il was born, according to the official version of history. Most other sources would assert that the older Kim spent the war years in exile in a camp near the small village of Vyatskoye 70 kilometers north of Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East, where the younger Kim was actually born in 1942.

The official Korean Central New Agency also has its own website, KCNA.co.jp, which is maintained by pro-Pyongyang ethnic Koreans in Japan, and carries daily news bulletins in Korean, English, Russian and Spanish, but with rather uninspiring headlines such as “Kim Jong-il sends message of greetings to Syrian president”, “Kim Jong-il’s work published in Mexico” and “Floral basket to DPRK [North Korea] Embassy [in Phnom Penh] from Cambodian Great King and Great Queen”.

On the more innocent side, the KCC produces software for writing with Korean characters a Korean version of Linux, games for personal computers and PlayStation – and an advanced computer adaptation of go, a kind of Asian chess game, which, according to the Dutch IT firm GPI Consultancy, “has won the world championship for go games for several years. The games department has a display showing all the trophies which were won during international competitions.”

Somewhat surprisingly, the North Koreans also produce some of the software for mobile phones made by the South Korean company Samsung, which began collaboration with the KCC in March 2000. North Korean computer experts have received training in China, Russia and India, and are considered, even by the South Koreans, as some of the best in the world.

More ominously, in October 2004, South Korea’s Defense Ministry reported to the country’s National Assembly that the North had trained “more than 500 computer hackers capable of launching cyber-warfare” against its enemies. “North Korea’s intelligence-warfare capability is estimated to have reached the level of advanced countries,” the report said, adding that the military hackers had been put through a five-year university course training them to penetrate the computer systems of South Korea, the United States and Japan.

According to US North Korea specialist Joseph Bermudez, “The Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces understands electronic warfare to consist of operations using electromagnetic spectrum to attack the enemy by jamming or spoofing. During the 1990s, the ministry identified electronic intelligence warfare as a new type of warfare, the essence of which is the disruption or destruction of the opponent’s computer networks – thereby paralyzing their military command and control system.”

Skeptical observers have noted that US firewalls should be able to prevent that from happening, and that North Korea still has a long way to go before it can seriously threaten the sophisticated computer networks of South Korea, Japan and the US.

It is also uncertain whether Kim Jong-nam still heads the KCC and the State Safety and Security Agency. In May 2001, he was detained at Tokyo’s airport at Narita for using what appeared to be a false passport from the Dominican Republic. He had arrived in the Japanese capital from Singapore with some North Korean children to visit Tokyo Disneyland – but instead found himself being deported to China. Since then, he has spent most of his time in the former Portuguese enclave of Macau, where he has been seen in the city’s casinos and massage parlors. This February, the Japanese and Hong Kong media published pictures of him in Macau, and details of his lavish lifestyle there – which prompted him to leave for mainland China, where he is now believed to be living.

Whatever Kim Jong-nam’s present status may be in the North Korean hierarchy, the KCC is more active than ever, and so is another software developer, the Pyongyang Informatics Center, which, at least until recently, had a branch in Singapore. Other links in the region include Taiwan’s Jiage Limited Corporation, which has entered a joint-venture operation with the KCC under the rather curious name Chosun Daedong River Electronic Calculator Joint Operation Companies, which, according to South Korea’s trade agency, KOTRA, produces computers and circuit boards.

The US Trading with the Enemy Act and restrictions under the international Wassenaar Arrangement, which controls the trade in dual-use goods and technologies (military and civilian), may prohibit the transfer of advanced technology to North Korea, but with easy ways around these restrictions, sanctions seem to have had little or no effect.

North Korea’s IT development seems unstoppable, and the APCSS’s Mansourov argues that it can “both strengthen and undermine political propaganda and ideological education, as well as totalitarian surveillance and control systems imposed by the absolutist and monarchic security-paranoid state on its people, especially at the time of growing conflict between an emerging entrepreneurial politico-corporate elites and the old military-industrial elite”.

So will the IT revolution, as he puts it, “liquefy or solidify the ground underneath Kim Jong-il’s regime? Will the IT revolution be the beginning of the end of North Korea, at least as we know it today?” Most probably, it will eventually break North Korea’s isolation, even if the country’s powerful military also benefits from improved technologies. And there may be a day when the KCNA will have something more exciting to report about than “A furnace-firing ceremony held at the Taean Friendship Glass Factory”.

Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific Media Services.

Posted in Communications, Computing/IT, Internet, Intranet, Korea Computer Center (KCC), Kwangmyong computer network, Silibank, Singapore | Comments Closed

How Can I Desert Our Leader & Our Motherland?

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Daily NK
Choi Myung Chul
4/19/2007

I defected at a young age and arrived in South Korea in 2004, where I was admitted into third of year of middle school. In North Korea, I had been attending school and was in second year high school.

At first, I found it difficult assimilating into a South Korean school. Social interests were different and the fact that 9 out of 10 South Korean children enjoyed going to an internet café and playing games was intriguing on its own. Though I find computer games challenging and fun today, back then it was hard enough trying to figure out a computer, let along mastering a game.

There are no opportunities to see computers in North Korea. That’s because no one owns a computer. Comparatively, North Korea is like South Korea in the 1970’s. I played outside with top spins, paper-flipping, slides and soccer. I also caught fish as our family lived in Hoiryeong nearby the Tumen River, though catching fish was not only a game but our means of survival.

At that time, the greatest obstacle to our play was hunger. When you run around and play, you need food to regain your energy. There were even times we had no strength to sit up and play. Rather we lay, slumped. During those times, we sat around day-dreaming. We would play truth or dare and pretend to smoke with cigarette butts we had secretly collected and talked nonsense while lamenting over our lives.

Satisfying hunger through the generosity of an affluent friend

We often had fights with kids from other schools. There was one incident where a child even got his head seriously hurt, but back then your friends were all you had. Even as we lay lifeless, I felt secure because of my friends.

Though I was starving, I even got to watch TV, that is during the short times our village was supplied energy. Though the majority of us were poor, one of my friends had a TV in his home, as his mother had done well at the markets. Even though only one station was broadcasting, the North Korea program, it was still very fun. I remember seeing one movie, “Order 027” which was about the People’s Army invading the Blue House (South Korea’s presidential building). The action wasn’t too bad, even interesting to a point.

Once in a blue moon, a friend would come into some money and then we would go to the markets to buy snacks. We bought bread made of corn powder and tofu rice. Even though the serving was small, my friend always shared his food with me.

Actually, all our friends did this. It was a time where we were all starving, yet we were willing to share our food, even half a corn cob.

Then one day, my mother left and I starving of hunger, left for China. On my way to Dalian in search for relatives, I was caught and forcefully repatriated back to North Korea. So I went looking for my best friend Hakjoo. Hakjoo and I had grown up together and had experienced so many things including severe hunger.

Offer to escape but offer denied

I informed Hakjoo of my plans and tried to persuade him to come. He replied, “Nevertheless, my homeland is here. If I died, I am going to die here. I cannot go with you.” We got into a huge argument and he said I had been brainwashed by capitalism.

Ever since we were little, we studied that Chosun (North Korea) was a socialist paradise and learned of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Song’s revolutionary history. Even at that time, many of us were ignorant of the outside world. My friend’s loyalty to the great leader stood firm and he denied leaving our motherland.

By the time I had seen and heard of China, my devotion to Kim Jong Il had disappeared. I tried to convince Hakjoo that China was rich in food and much more abundant than North Korea but, failed to persuade him. I remember him saying, “Still. How can I desert our leader and our motherland?”

Hakjoo did not agree with my dreams but he still wished me health and safety. He also promised me that he would not report me to the authorities and said, “Don’t worry. But you must go in safety. Do not get caught and be safe.”

North Korea is a society where each person regulates one another. It is a society where trust is nonexistent. However, I trusted that friend and because I believed that he would not report me, I was able to safely defect the country.

As I left, I said to me friend, “I will return without fail… I’ll see you then.”

That was ’98. I found my way to my relatives home in Dlian, worked as a farmer in China for 3 years and then at a restaurant for 3 years.

At first, I planned to live in China. I had no intention of coming to Korea as I felt it would then be harder for me to return to North Korea. However, I could not continue to live hidden as an illegal immigrant and in the end, I followed the footsteps of another friend in 2004.

Whenever I face a hard time I think, ‘If I came with Hakjoo, it wouldn’t have been so hard,’ If we had defected together, the hardships in China and the loneliness would not have been so bad.

No matter how difficult the task, that friend always pulled through. However, he is not here now and so all the decisions have to be made by me. It’s tough because there is not one person I can fully trust and be dependent on.

But I am going to live well. Every day, I have just enough to scrape by and though it’s not easy, I am attending university. When I return to North Korea one day, there are many things for me to do. My dream is to construct a company there and rebuild a North Korea that has fallen to devastation.

And above all, I study because I made a promise to my friend. When I return to my hometown, my aim is to meet my friend standing tall and proud.

Posted in 1990s Famine, Civil society, Computing/IT, Emigration, Television | Comments Closed

Education institutions in the DPRK

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

NK Choson.com

Kimchaek University of Technology, the top college of science and engineering as well as a central higher educational institution of North Korea, is located in Pyongyang, not in Kimchaek.

Colleges and universities in North Korea are classified into two: central and regional. But criteria for the classification differ from those of the South. It’s wrong to assume that those located in the capital are central institutes of higher education, and those housed in provincial cities and towns are regional ones.

Central higher educational institutions as referred to in the North denote “central-grade institutions of higher education founded in Pyongyang and elsewhere in the provinces for the purpose of educating prospective national leaders, engineers and scientists.” Accordingly, colleges and universities located in Pyongyang are not necessarily central institutions of higher education; nor those situated in the provinces are all regional colleges and universities.

Chongjin Mining and Metallurgy College, the only one of its kind not only in the North but in Asia, and Wonsan Agriculture College, the first of its kind in the North, for example, are definitely central colleges, though the former is located in North Hamgyong Province, and the latter in Kangwon Province, respectively. The same applies to Shinuiju Light Industry College located in North Pyongan Province; Sariwon College of Koryo Pharmacy in North Hwanghai Province; and Hamhung Hydrographic and Power College in South Hamgyong Province. Though located in provincial cities, they are all central colleges founded with regional features taken into account.

On the other hand, Pyongyang Machinery College, Pyongyang Agriculture College, Pyongyang Printing Industry College, though all are located in the capital, are classified as regional colleges. Each province or special city under the direct jurisdiction of the central government in the North has two normal and teachers colleges and one arts and physical education colleges, all of which are typical regional ones. Factory, farm and fishing farm colleges attached to industrial entities also belong to the regional category.

What is the central criterion separating central high educational institutions from their regional counterparts? It depends on who administers and manages them. Those administered directly by the Education Ministry are central institutions of higher education; those administered by the Education Department of the People’s Committee of a relevant province or special city placed directly under the jurisdiction of the central government are regional colleges or universities. Needless to say, no regional institutions of higher education are free from Education Ministry guidance; the guidance is only given indirectly through the People’s Committee Education Department of a pertinent province or special city. In an exception, Kim Il Sung University, the most prestigious higher educational institute in the North, is placed under the direct jurisdiction of the cabinet.

Central colleges and universities, wherever they are located, recruit students from across the land, and their graduates are assigned to any agencies, factories, corporations or research institutes in the country. On the other hand, only seniors and graduates from senior high schools in pertinent provinces and special cities are eligible to enter regional institutes of higher education, whose graduates, when given job assignments upon graduation, are confined to offices or factories in their respective administrative areas.

North Korea has quite a few institutes of higher education that are called colleges, entirely unrelated to central and regional colleges, but whose nature and curricula are totally different. The Yalu River College trains espionage agents sent to the South under the jurisdiction of the Reconnaissance Bureau of the Ministry of People’s Armed Forces; Pyongyang College of Technology, also called the State Security Agency Political College, produces prospective leaders of the intelligence agency.

The Automation College, once called Mirim College, is a special college founded for the purpose of turning out manpower needed for waging electronics information warfare, placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces. The College of People’s Economics and International Relations College are institutes retraining leading staff of the party headquarters; the College of Communism run by each province or special city is a special educational institute retraining junior leaders of regional chapters of the Workers’ Party.

Posted in Computing/IT, Education, Kim Chaek University of Technology, Kim Il Sung University, Light Industry, Manufacturing, Shinuiju Light Industry College, Wonsan Agriculture College | Comments Closed

Samjiyon Information Technology Center (SITC)

Monday, April 2nd, 2007

Samjiyon Information Technology Center was established as a professional multimedia technology department under the control of KCC on October 24, 1990.

From that time down to this day, SITC has been conducting research & development activities about fields of multimedia communication, image processing, audio & video processing, embedded application, educational application, multimedia contents and authoring tools, and the many powerful and good products were developed.

Our products are being on sale on home and foreign markets, and well received by the customers.

SITC is making inroads actively into the foreign markets based on cooperative relations established with several companies of Japan and China in fields of marketing and joint research & development.

SITC is very proud of its employees, among them more than 80% are qualified with masters or doctoral degrees.

Distribution ratio of technical personnel by fields

Strategy
– Continuous improvement of the qualitative growth of technical forces
– Strengthening of the cooperative relations between enterprises and educational & research institutions
– Maximum intellectual property

Management Goal
– 3 unique products and services
– 10 unique core technologies
– Certification acquisition from ISO9001 Pyongyang Certificate authority and CMM3 acquisition

As in the past, SITC will meet customers’ expectations by superior technology and improved service while amplifying cooperation and exchange with home and foreign partners.

Posted in Animation, Art, Communications, Computing/IT, Film, Korea Computer Center (KCC) | Comments Closed

S.Koreans Join Ceremony For Digital Library Opening In Pyongyang

Thursday, March 29th, 2007

Yonhap
3/29/2007

A group of 143 South Koreans made a four-day visit to North Korea starting from March 22 to celebrate the opening of a North Korean digital library built with South Korean technology, a local foundation that has a leading role in the project said.

During their stay in Pyongyang, Rep. Im Jong-seok of the ruling Uri Party and other delegates attended the opening ceremony of the digital library at the North’s top school, Kimilsung University, on March 23 and toured the city’s landmarks.

The library’s computer network was built with aid from South Korea’s Hanyang University, the Kim Dae-jung Presidential Library and the Korean Foundation for South-North Economic and Cultural Cooperation, a private foundation for the promotion of such inter-Korean cooperation.

Kimilsung University is the first North Korean school to introduce the South’s advanced digital library system.

Jo Chol, vice president of the North’s university, said he hopes to see an exchange of teaching staff between the universities of the two Koreas, saying the exchange in academic fields will promote the improvement of inter-Korean relations.

Posted in Art, Communications, Computing/IT, International Aid, Korean Foundation for South-North Economic and Cultural, Library | Comments Closed

North Korean Economy Watch