Asia Times: PYONGYANG WATCH: Whither the Web?


	March 1, 2001	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
Whither the Web?

By Aidan Foster-Carter

"According to the far-reaching plan of the Great General who is determined to computerize the whole country, computer genius education bases will be newly established." Thus the North Korean party paper Rodong Sinmun on January 15. Needless to say the Dear Leader, with "his extraordinary knowledge about the computer area", has given "concrete and detailed guidance". And since you ask: "Even the work for satisfactory supply of electricity and heating is being carried out simultaneously."

Well yes, a reliable power supply does help. North Korea has problems on that front. Aid workers in Pyongyang face not only brown-outs but also current fluctuations which do their laptops no good at all. The geniuses had best be ready for a lot of downtime. Yet such obstacles don't deter the DPRK, whose computing ambitions are not confined to an elite. On January 18 the official newsagency KCNA quoted an Education Ministry official, O Min, as saying computer education is now compulsory at all universities, colleges and high schools. How many get hands-on experience, even of the aged 386s which are North Korea's mainstay, is another matter. There's fierce debate in Seoul whether to let them buy Pentiums.

That Kim Jong-il is an IT buff was clear from his visit to Legend Computers in Beijing last May. But serious computing in North Korea goes back to 1990, and the founding of the Korea Computer Center (KCC). This has grown into an 800-strong research outfit, producing software ranging from Korean language programs (including a version of Linux), voice recognition and simultaneous translation, to specialist programs for transport, mines and other industries - even, they say, a 100 percent computerized battery chicken plant. For relaxation, if that's the word, there are programs for chess and paduk (Go).

But what of the Web? A national intranet, called Kwangmyong, has grown five-fold in the last two years - though KCNA didn't reveal the number of users. Linking government departments (central and local) to research institutes and factories, this is mainly a science and technology database. But it also offers digital publishing, a bulletin board, and e-mail - to request material, not chat. Yet all this is internal to North Korea. Some foreign science journals are available online, but so far it seems there is no general access to the World Wide Web - though a deal with an Australian provider had been reported. Nor is there apparently any use yet of the allocated country suffix, ".kp". Self-reliance rules. That can't last.

Still, they must be good - because Seoul is buying in. Samsung, for one, hired KCC programmers to staff a software research center it opened in Beijing last year. But mostly it's small Southern firms who are setting the pace. Cho Hyun-jung, president of BIT Computer (a medical data start-up), went North earlier this month for a seminar with (he thought) about 60 IT specialists - and found himself lecturing to 500 from all over North Korea. He was also asked to send teaching materials - hitherto laboriously translated from Japanese, which is crazy. South Korea may be the world's most wired country: it is far ahead of Japan. Both sides agreed to standardize keyboards and IT terminology. Cho met the North's minister for electronics and the head of KCC. He suggested the North create its own Silicon Valley, and even looked at a site. He didn't say where, but Hyundai is touting Mt Kumgang (well, it would).

Others fancy the Yalu valley. On February 12, a rival Southern team announced a joint venture to build an IT complex in Sinuiju and the Chinese city of Dandong, on opposite banks of the Yalu river. The first stage is for 30 Southern IT firms on a 5,000 square kilometer site in Dandong; the plan being to expand across to Sinuiju by March 2002. The prime mover here is hanabiz.com, a Southern consulting firm. Its partners include Herbmedi.com, Gigalink and Cubic TRC, who plan to create a trial broadband network at the Pyongyang Information Center (a rival to KCC?) and sell Northern software in the South. We'll see.

Finally, already up and running in Tokyo is an intriguing joint venture between South Korea's IMRI and a pro-North Korean firm in Japan, CGS. Both are fascinating in their own right. IMRI's founder Yoo Wan-young, still in his 30s, met his first Northerners when a student in Moscow in 1990. His firm makes computer monitors in Pyongyang, costing 30-40 percent less than in the South and with a similar defect rate (0.2-0.3%). This year Yoo plans to open a polystyrene packaging plant in North Korea as well. His long-term plan is to help convert the North's military-industrial complex to civilian uses.

Yoo's partner and the president of Unikotech - it stands for "Unification of Korean Technology" - is Ryang Yong-bu: a member of Chongryun, the pro-DPRK body of Koreans in Japan, and a computing major from their Korea University in Tokyo. His links with KCC go back to 1992 and were cemented in 1995 when he sent them new PCs after a fire. Now he sells KCC's word-processing and translation software, plus IMRI's LCD displays; he hopes to take Unikotech public in three years. Yoo and Ryang are 21st century Koreans: uniting to make money, not war. They are Korea's future. Wish them well.

(Copyright 2001 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies. This article will probably also appear on the JoongAng Ilbo website, which obviously has no idea what "copyright" means.)

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