March 11, 2005
Will cell phones crack North Korea's totalitarian regime?
Jong-Heon Lee for World Peace Herald writes about North Korea and how some day, domestic opposition could jeopardize the totalitarian regime. And one of the reasons may just be cell phones.
"North Korea authorities have banned the use of mobile phones and confiscate them to prevent information from being leaked to the outside world.
But the use of mobile phones has helped pierce North Korea's Iron Curtain and break down the Pyongyang regime, which insulates itself through isolating citizens and curbing the spread of information.
Many North Koreans, including border peddlers and border guards, have Chinese cell phones, and they easily contact South Koreans with them in the border areas. They make cell phone calls to their South Korean relatives or North Korean defectors to ask for cash or other economic aid, South Korean officials say.
North Koreans are using Chinese telecommunication networks to reach South Korean phones, intelligence sources here say. Chinese communication firms, which have rapidly expanded their cell phone services, recently installed relay stations along the border with North Korea, which has kindled a cell phone boom in North Korea.
The Chinese devices are charged using pre-paid phone cards, and cost some 400 Chinese yuan (less than $50) for three month's use.
Despite the strict measures, mobile phones have served as conveyer belts of information from the outside world to help combat decades of state-sponsored propaganda and misinformation, defectors say.
How to maintain the closure of the society in this globalized world community? This is a huge dilemma for North Korea to keep the hermit kingdom afloat."
Related articles:
-- North Korea: Chinese cellphones spawn an information boom - An interesting article by Rebecca MacKinnon for the International Herald Tribune via Smart Mobs on how North Koreans are receiving information about the outside world, are conducting business with Chinese traders and maintain contact with Defectors now living in the South - all thanks to cell phones. (Jan 05)
-- New agent of change in N. Korea: cellphones - In a country where nearly every facet of society is controlled, North Korean authorities are encountering a new foe: the cellphone. A fascinating article from the The Christian Science Monitor via Telecoms Korea.
"Mobile phones, which are ubiquitous in China and South Korea, are now infiltrating North Korea and are allowing information into - and out of - the "hermit kingdom."
Douglas Shin, a Korean-American minister who has been campaigning for human rights in North Korea, sees the emerging cellphone "revolution" as paralleling, if not abetting, budding dissent against the government.
[...] Cellphone users must climb a hill or mountain to use them, but still he says it's possible to convey messages that previously would never have penetrated the barriers of a state that bars normal international mail and ordinary telephone calls for all but a privileged few.
-- North Korean authorities and cellphones - There are indications that news is leaking out of North Korea by cellphone and that criticisms of the government are being posted in public places. (Nov 04)
-- North Korea bans mobile phones - North Korea may have banned mobile phones only 18 months after allowing them to be introduced, and reports are coming in of the already isolated country building a barbed-wire fence along its border with China to prevent smuggling (June 04).
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