Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Are North Koreans on Tinder?
/ Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
U.S. dating app Tinder has “many users” in North Korea, Tinder claimed on its official Twitter account on Wednesday.
In a reply to a “Vanity Fair” article, which criticized Tinder and the growth of online dating, Tinder said the writer should “talk to our many users in China and North Korea who find a way to meet people on Tinder even though Facebook is banned.”
/ Screen capture from Tinder Twitter
Tinder has had 70,000 downloads on Android smartphones in China, but this is not a large amount, considering that Tinder has 50 million active users.
To sign in to Tinder, users must have Facebook account. North Korea and China ban Facebook. Users in China can download the dating app via Baidu, Tencent and Qihoo 360.
Tinder spokeswoman Rosette Pambakian said Tinder had users in 196 countries including China and North Korea, but she refused to disclose further information to the South China Morning Post.
Koryo Tours general manager Simon Cockerell also said, “Bear in mind that North Koreans can’t access the internet.”
He said that if Tinder was referring to foreigners in North Korea who could access the Internet, then “many” was surely an overstatement as there were not many foreigners there.