Does North Korea’s new policy on mobile phones for foreigners signal an embrace of global technology?
orth Korea, a country once almost entirely shut off from the world, now allows visiting foreign tourists the use of their mobile phones. Reports from North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, state that there has been a change in policy, and visitors may now buy special tourist SIM cards.
Prior to this development, tourists who were lucky enough to have been granted entry into the country were used to having their mobile phones confiscated by border control as part of an exhaustive security check. Now, according to the sole North Korean mobile phone provider Koryolink, calls can be made using the SIM cards internally and internationally.
tourists who were lucky enough to have been granted entry into the country were used to having their mobile phones confiscated by border control
This development seems to indicate a willingness from the government to encourage foreign visitors, and the change in policy will certainly improve the visitor’s stay as he or she will now be able to phone embassies, hotels or home at their leisure.
Heavy restrictions still remain in place, however, and visitors are banned from calling South Korea and notably any North Korean national. Locals look set to remain cut off from the majority of tourists despite the fact that mobile phones are used widely. A 3G network, built by an Egyptian business Orascom over a year ago, has given North Korean people access to mobile phones, and there are estimated to be around one million in possession of a personal cell.
The changes in the use of mobile phones are in keeping with the tentative steps that North Korea has taken under the current President Kim Jong-un to begin to lift the veil of secrecy that surrounds the country- or at least present an image of doing so.
visitors are banned from calling South Korea and notably any North Korean national
The acid test will be whether use of the Internet is ever delivered to the majority of the population, rather than just the government elites. On a recent trip to North Korea, Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said that unless North Korea embraced the Internet “they will remain behind” and “find it harder to catch up economically”.
Officials in Pyongyang have dismissed that possibility for the time being, but ultimately it seems that the country may well begin to embrace the world’s globally connected technology and business community. However for the moment, North Korea’s future is, as ever, difficult to predict.
by Jack Goodman
