North Korean mobile-phone users spend an average of $13.9(about 16,000won) a month on calls and text messages, and they tend to pay in hard currency, a British business weekly reported in its Feb. 11-17 edition.
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The Economist introduced the rapid spreading of mobile phones in the reclusive communist country with a phone of young women who are deeply engaged in sending text messages in a photo.
“Smuggled mobiles have been used on Chinese networks near the border for years, but now business is booming for Koryolink, the North’s only official cellular network, based in the capital, Pyongyang,” the paper said.
The magazine reported that the service―75 percent-owned by Orascom, an Egyptian firm, and 25%-owned by the North Korean state―has gone from 300,000 to 1 million subscribers in 18 months.
For a hermit kingdom whose rulers resent their subjects keeping closely in touch with each other, this is a remarkable development, it added.
“Many customers turn up at Koryolink shops with bundles of euro notes,” the Ecohomist quoted a foreign diplomat as saying. “There are even incentives for paying in euros, such as free off-peak calls. This provides foreign currency for a government that craves it.”
The magazine also reported that mobile-phone customers obtain the hard currency from the informal private trading on which many North Koreans depend. “Such business is forbidden, but the government has failed to feed its people, forcing it to turn a blind eye to some capitalist practices.” Many insiders benefit: yongyang’s “golden couples” consist of a government-official husband and an entrepreneur wife, according to the magazine.
“Koryolink is a walled garden: users are not able to make or receive international calls, and there is no Internet access. It would be hard to imagine that calls and text messages are not monitored,” is said. The network is even becoming a means by which the state disseminates propaganda. Rodong Shinmun, the government mouthpiece, sends out text messages that relay the latest news to phone subscribers.
“Their phones are not yet the tools of revolution, but mark an amazing change for all that,” the Economist said.