[lbo-talk] North Korea goes online

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Mon Jul 26 03:47:13 PDT 2004


Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com, Mon Jul 26 02:08:12 PDT 2004:
>Yeah, but this is kinda higher stakes... They're doing PR for the
>most vilified government in the world. If I were a North Korean PR
>guy, I would be more spiffy.

According to Reuters, the Naenara ("My Country") site at www.kcckp.net is not the first but the third North Korean website -- what's new is its emphasis on commercial opportunities in North Korea:

<blockquote>KCNA has been available on the Internet for about five years on the Japan-based site www.kcna.co.jp. Another North Korean site, www.uriminzokkiri.com, publishes Pyongyang views from China.

The new portal provides the North Korean telephone numbers of state trading companies that offer products raging from "stylish dresses of fine workmanship" to ferrous and nonferrous metals. ("N.Korea Opens Pilot Web Portal, Glitches Remain," <a href="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=5663968">July 14, 2004</a>)</blockquote>


>From the same Reuters article, the reader also learns that "[t]he
launch follows the start of online gambling [!] run by the North two years ago and an online shopping mall in the South that sells goods imported from the North" ("N.Korea Opens Pilot Web Portal, Glitches Remain," <a href="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=5663968">July 14, 2004</a>).

It is a German company KCC (Korea Computer Center)-Europe <http://www.kcc-europe.de/> that created and maintains www.kcckp.net, which may compound translation trouble, as the company may be translating documents from Korean to German to English. The owner of KCC-Europe is Jan Holtermann, an adventurous and optimistic entrepreneur:

<blockquote>A German, Jan Holtermann owner of the computer firm KCC Europe, is putting North Korea online.

He hopes that by being there first he will be able to eventually tap into North Korean computer talent.

The country's small number of internet users currently dial-up to Chinese providers, a costly process at about £1 a minute.

Mr Holtermann's customers, who he hopes will number 2,000 by the end of the year, will have unlimited access for £400 a month.

As only a few North Koreans are permitted to have telephones, and as the internet service is costly, Mr Holtermann expects his customers to be government ministries, news agencies and aid organisations.

He has invested £530,000 in the venture, intending to get first pick when North Korean software programmers come onto the market.

"They are very talented," he says.

"It's this capacity we want to sell in Europe." (Lucy Jones, "Foreign Investors Brave North Korea," <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3558283.stm">April 13, 2004</a>)</blockquote>

According to <http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=http://www.kcckp.net%2F>, www.kcckp.net is run on Linux. Take that, Microsoft! -- Yoshie

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