80 IT Experts to Visit North Korea Next Month
By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter
A group of information technology-related experts and businessmen will visit North Korea next month to discuss exchanges of telecommunication technology, organizers said Thursday.
The communist state opened an advanced mobile phone network last month even though services were limited to some rich citizens and traders in Pyongyang and some top government officials only.
The 80-member group is scheduled to leave for Pyongyang via Shenyang, China, on Feb. 7 to visit an information center and inspect IT facilities there.
They will also donate 4,000 books and 1,000 journals on telecommunication during the five-day trip, organizers said.
The visitors include Professor Kim Jin-hyung of the Computer Science Department at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and Yu Wan-young, CEO of Unikotech Korea.
They will meet officials from the North's Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation and Ministry of Education, they said.
The organization for IT exchange and cooperation between the two Koreas was launched in January of 2007 and dispatched a group of 20 engineers last April to Gaeseong, North Korea, to deliver scientific journals and for talks with their North Korean counterparts.
An organization official said the group will continue making efforts at constant cooperation in the IT sector with the North.
North Korea has had restricted Internet access and mobile phone services since 2004, when an explosion at Ryongchon station, bordering China, killed more than 150 people and injured nearly 1,300.
The North's security agency believed a cellular phone was used as a detonator since a fragment of a mobile device was found at the scene.
However, the North began to gradually ease regulations from last year.
Egypt's Orascom Telecom built the 3G wireless network last month, which will accommodate about 22 million people, according to North Korean media reports.
Inter-Korean relations have soured since President Lee Myung-bak took office late last February with a vow to toughen Seoul's stance toward the communist North.
Since Dec. 1, the Stalinist state has restricted border crossings as a retaliatory measure.