My understanding is that there are three mobile networks in North Korea: the normal one used by the citizens (they have smartphones made specifically for North Korea), one used by the government/military and one for tourists (requires a local SIM card only available in a specific hotel in Pyongyang).
The last one is connected to the internet and this is why you can see (or at least before the pandemic could see) Instagram posts from North Korea.
I have no idea if this information is still or ever was completely true though.
There's a somewhat dated but very interesting AMA on Reddit by an American teaching computer science in Pyongyang:
Reading about the internet knowledge possessed by North Korean students, I'm always surprised how they supposedly also manage to be some of the most cunning and evil actors when it comes to hacking.
>one for tourists (requires a local SIM card only available in a specific hotel in Pyongyang).
I do not think that exists. I imagine the diplomats and other foreigners living there will have this, though.
When I was there two times (in Pyongyang, and in villages in the north east & Rason) any access to the outside world was prohibited via a network other than telephone (I could make outgoing phone calls via the hotel). Even traveling very close to the border (which they use jammers to block outside connections), my guides were annoyed when they saw I was trying to connect to the Chinese network from my phone.
The only place I saw any access "to the outside world" was in Rason (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rason_Special_Economic_Zone), where one of the casinos had a computer which could be used to access the internet (through the Chinese GFW, of course).
"I'm always surprised how they supposedly also manage to be some of the most cunning and evil actors when it comes to hacking"
This sentiment is probably overblown. The fact that they are effectively robbing people to earn some money for their pathetic regime means only that they are on the level of nowadays internet scammers. They are good at that too.
Spending enough money (and they spend a lot - 26 million people work only for this) one can train people to do this or hire people to do this for them.
Do those small utility boxes alongside the tracks make sense for fiber optic? I expected things like that to be larger, if only because fiber has a minimum bend radius.
Yes, poles are standard practice in a lot of places, but not generally for backbone links. There's only a few of those and it makes sense to get the extra protection from burying them.
Also, installing general telco fibre next to railway lines is standard practice. Makes all the bureaucracy so much easier if you can just use the existing railway right-of-way. Not that the DPRK would care much about right-of-way ;D
I found the railroad part of the article unpersuasive. Optical repeater stations are fairly large and therefore wouldn't show up as random small underground vaults or little boxes on poles. These look like a collection of pictures of train tracks with no particular indicators of optical cables therein.
Can we back up and just recognize how insane North Korea is? I think that future generations will look back on our history and wonder why nobody ever did anything about the incredible atrocities that took place in that country for decades.
I will get buried for saying this, but DPRK survived as a people, investing everything into a nuclear program to survive. The reason nobody did anything is they firmly built a defense against intervention, and given how the korean war went, how various US interventions looked after that, it was the correct thing to do. The most the US could do to them in recent years was murder some innocent fishermen. It has tried to starve them and failed.
Except we aren't blameless either for the state North Korea ended up in. We leveled nearly every building in the country, we even targeted rural thatch huts with bombing runs. We dropped so many bombs on North Korea that the bombers started dropping bombs on thrice bombed rubble and open land because they couldn't find any targets left to attack. Why should we be surprised that a strong arm authoritarian leadership rose up among the chaos and put every effort towards military power and obtaining nuclear weapons at the expense of everything else?
I can't even say that they made the wrong decision either, North Korea still exists as an independent nation which is amazing in itself.
At least NK's human rights abuses are contained within their borders. I hope future generations will look back on the many US invasions of foreign countries over the years and all the war crimes that took place during those invasions with the scrutiny they deserve.
high voltage transmission lines can and are built with a glass fibre core, and would be essentaily invisible
also a ditch witch and couple of support vehicles could run cable through most terrain, and in agrairian areas , not needing permits and such, would be indistinguisashable from other activity ,happen very quickly, and leave no trace
humanity has reached the point where our comunications net is a given for 90%+ of the
population centers in one form or another, and if not for the slop, would have an order of magnitude, excess capacity.
throw in peer to peer ,and the soon to be blanket coverage from sattelite swarms, and
well, what? sonar relays for underwater, and
seizmo transmitters
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[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 62.0 ms ] threadWhat's your source for that number? Is it GBit or GByte? Are they building out OTU1?
The last one is connected to the internet and this is why you can see (or at least before the pandemic could see) Instagram posts from North Korea.
I have no idea if this information is still or ever was completely true though.
There's a somewhat dated but very interesting AMA on Reddit by an American teaching computer science in Pyongyang:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ucl11/iama_american_...
Reading about the internet knowledge possessed by North Korean students, I'm always surprised how they supposedly also manage to be some of the most cunning and evil actors when it comes to hacking.
I do not think that exists. I imagine the diplomats and other foreigners living there will have this, though.
When I was there two times (in Pyongyang, and in villages in the north east & Rason) any access to the outside world was prohibited via a network other than telephone (I could make outgoing phone calls via the hotel). Even traveling very close to the border (which they use jammers to block outside connections), my guides were annoyed when they saw I was trying to connect to the Chinese network from my phone.
The only place I saw any access "to the outside world" was in Rason (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rason_Special_Economic_Zone), where one of the casinos had a computer which could be used to access the internet (through the Chinese GFW, of course).
This sentiment is probably overblown. The fact that they are effectively robbing people to earn some money for their pathetic regime means only that they are on the level of nowadays internet scammers. They are good at that too.
Spending enough money (and they spend a lot - 26 million people work only for this) one can train people to do this or hire people to do this for them.
Edit: Good article though, I enjoyed it a lot.
As for utility boxes along the track, it could be something railway-related, for example, some railway control or monitoring equipment.
Also, installing general telco fibre next to railway lines is standard practice. Makes all the bureaucracy so much easier if you can just use the existing railway right-of-way. Not that the DPRK would care much about right-of-way ;D
I can't even say that they made the wrong decision either, North Korea still exists as an independent nation which is amazing in itself.
Why in that country ? US controls much of western opinion and made a lot of atrocities, yet, nobody cares (see the ongoing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_military_st... )
America bombed North Korea back to the stone age. Now we in the West wonder why it’s so F’d up by its very own volition.
[1]: This is not to say that North Korean propaganda is not real.
North Korea is responsible for adding the hot beverage, umbrella with raindrops, and lightning bolt emojis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KPS_9566
also a ditch witch and couple of support vehicles could run cable through most terrain, and in agrairian areas , not needing permits and such, would be indistinguisashable from other activity ,happen very quickly, and leave no trace
humanity has reached the point where our comunications net is a given for 90%+ of the population centers in one form or another, and if not for the slop, would have an order of magnitude, excess capacity. throw in peer to peer ,and the soon to be blanket coverage from sattelite swarms, and well, what? sonar relays for underwater, and seizmo transmitters