NK’s embrace of technology double-edged sword

By Kim Young-jin

North Korea’s growing use of information technology is a double-edged sword, experts suggested Friday, as citizens there see greater access to mobile phones and other technology.

The isolated state, which blocks its people from accessing outside information, has in recent years developed an internal intranet system and now has over 600,000 subscribers to its 3G mobile phone network.

The services, while strictly monitored, have raised the prospect of a freer flow of information. Some have speculated this could give citizens the tools to galvanize a popular revolution similar to recent examples in the Middle East.

At a forum at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies in Seoul, experts weighed the implications of the technology, which Pyongyang seems to have introduced in a bid to catch up with the rest of the world as its economy continues to struggle.

Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University said that technology would hurt the regime in the long run, citing the impact of South Korean DVDs that are smuggled in.

Defector groups with lines into the North say South Korean culture such as pop music and soap operas are widely popular there, revealing to North Koreans the huge wealth disparity across the border.

“The North Korean government encourages (the new technology) and this is probably its biggest mistake. They try to control content while encouraging the spread of hardware such as mobile phones and computers. In the long run, it will make the situation probably more suitable for the spread of information,” he said.

Pyongyang is known as one of the worst repressors of information in the world. Only high level officials have access to the internet and random checks on hard drives for banned information are commonplace.

On the other hand, Evgeny Morozov, a liberation technology expert at Stanford University, said if Pyongyang learns lessons from fallen authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, it could actually benefit from the use of such devices.

“If they are smart, strategic and technologically savvy, they may be able to use them for their own purposes,” he said, adding that such a perspective was important so that concerned parties could help block such abuses by the repressive state.

He said technology provides new means of surveillance, noting that mobile phones are easy to tap and that repressive Iran closely watches for people trying to access banned websites.

“If Egypt had been smart, it would have used data mining technology to gauge sentiment.”

The North could also follow the footsteps of China and Iran, who have paid bloggers to steer public discourse over sensitive public events, he said. Burma has used cyber attacks to disable news websites.

Casting an eye on the fallen regimes in Egypt and Libya, if Pyongyang ever did allow any internet culture, it would have to use domestic platforms as opposed to international ones that allowed for social networking sites that helped spur popular uprisings.

Lankov argued that greater access to information was a positive step towards the empowerment of the people, but added a caveat.

“I would not be too optimistic. The spread of knowledge is an important condition that is likely to bring eventual transformation or collapse of the regime. But it is no means the only such condition,” he said.