North Korean tablet PC uses South Korean memory chips

By Kim Hyo-jin

Memory chips made by South Korea’s SK hynix are seen in the main board of a North Korean tablet PC, Ryonghung. / Courtesy of North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity

North Korean tablet PCs operate on South Korean-made memory chips, a Seoul-based group said Wednesday.

The North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity (NKIS), an anti-Pyongyang advocacy group run by North Korean defectors, said the North’s tablet PC, Ryonghung, includes two memory chips made by South Korean chipmaker SK hynix.

“They appear to have ended up inside the Ryonghung as Pyongyang imported the entire main board from China,” NKIS director Kim Heung-kwang said.

Kim is an IT expert who used to work as a professor at North Korea’s Hamhung University of Computer Technology before he defected to the South in 2004.

He said the group disassembled the gadget to look into the level of technology development as the reclusive country has actively introduced its own tablet PCs in recent years.

North Korean unveiled its own version of the Apple iPad, called Samjiyon, in 2012. The following year, Ryonghung was presented at an international trade fair in Pyongyang. It was followed by another tablet PC dubbed Myohyang in May of this year.

“Though it is a North Korea-labeled product, inside was 100 percent filled up with components imported from China, even nuts and bolts,” Kim said.

Only language and basic applications were applied to the imported hardware by the North, he added.

The android-based tablet has education apps presenting works of North Korea’s former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, game and music apps, a camera, photo folder and calculator. But Internet Explorer was not available on the tablet, he noted.

The eight-inch tablet Ryonghung weighs 8.8 ounces and has a six-hour battery life.

It consists of a 1 gigahertz central processing unit, a 512 megabyte random-access memory, an 8 gigabyte internal memory and 16 gigabyte external memory.

Its package comes with a pink protective case, a battery charger and accessories from Chinese memory chip maker Kingston.