South Korea: Information wall coming down in North Korea?

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By Lee Jong-Heon
UPI Correspondent

Published: December 24, 

Seoul, South Korea — The information wall North Korea has set up along its borders to keep its people isolated from the rest of the world for half a century is finally coming down, with the help of mobile phones.

Defectors from North Korea and ethnic Koreans in China, who have extensive contacts in North Korea via cell phones, are bringing outside news into the North and obtaining information on what's happening inside the hermit kingdom.

They are selling the information they collect from North Koreans to civic groups and government officials in South Korea, which is hungry for intelligence on its reclusive communist neighbor, according to the groups on Thursday.

Earlier this month the Daily NK, a Seoul-based Internet outlet that focuses on North Korea's internal affairs, was the first to report the North's currency revaluation, just hours after the communist regime took the surprise measure.

South Korea's government offices, such as the Unification Ministry responsible for handling inter-Korean relations, could not immediately verify the report. Days later, the North's media confirmed it.

The Daily NK, run by defectors from North Korea, also reported the furious public response to the currency reform that forced residents to swap notes of its won currency into new ones at a rate of 100 to one.

According to the news outlet, the measure immediately sparked a strong public backlash as the regime limited the maximum amount of old bills that could be converted into new ones, which rendered excess holdings of old bills worthless. The Seoul government is still struggling to verify the reports.

Good Friends, another civic group with contacts in the North, reported this month an outbreak of swine flu in the isolated country, which could not contain the contagion due to dilapidated medical facilities and lack of medicines and electricity to run medical devices. The virus infection has already claimed the lives of over 140 people in South Korea.

Two days later, North Korea acknowledged the domestic outbreak of the H1N1 flu, saying nine people were found infected with the virus in its capital Pyongyang and industrial city of Sinuiju.

The rare admission, seen as a call for help, prompted South Korea to donate antiviral drugs worth more than US$15 million. A shipment of Tamiflu and Relenza for 500,000 patients has been recently delivered.

The provision of drugs marked the first government aid to the North since South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office early last year, with a vow not to provide unconditional aid to the country that poses missile and nuclear threats to the region.

Civil groups – which also include Open Radio for North Korea, a radio station specializing in North Korean news – are collecting information from defectors and ethnic Koreans in the Chinese region bordering the North. They keep contact via cell phones. It is believed that one such contact leaked news by mobile phone of the 2004 explosion at the North's Ryongchon Railway Station that devastated the lives of thousands of people.

The Seoul-based groups are also providing outside information to people in the North via mobile phones, as well as traditional methods such as distributing shortwave radios that enable North Koreans to listen to South Korean programs and sending leaflets that contain outside information.

Many North Koreans, including border traders, are using mobile phones, making use of Chinese cell phone networks, according to Seoul's intelligence sources.

Chinese communication firms, which have rapidly expanded their cell phone services, have installed relay stations along the border with North Korea. Mobile phones with pre-paid cards have been smuggled in from China.

Cell phones have become more essential to North Korean officials and merchants conducting business along the border after North Korea recently tightened its border controls. Some of them have made cell phone calls to relatives in the South to ask for money.

The North began mobile phone service in Pyongyang in November 2002, but shut it down in 2004 to tighten controls on outside information. Orascom, an Egyptian telecom firm, and the North Korean government established a joint venture named Koryolink in December, 2008. The firm has since been providing subscribers with third-generation W-CDMA mobile service.

Some of the 20,000 North Korean defectors living in the South keep in touch with their relatives in the North via mobile phones. "I know much about what was happing in my hometown bordering China as I often receive calls from my families and friends there," one defector said.

"It seems nothing is possible in North Korea, but actually everything is possible if they have mobiles and money," said Cho Myung-chul, who taught economics at North Korea's Kim Il-Sung University before his defection to the South in 1994.

The North has recently intensified a crackdown on information leaks. According to Seoul's Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, a number of North Korean citizens were arrested and could face execution for leaking information on the country.

"Many North Korean residents in the northeastern border city of Hoeryong have been charged with espionage," the daily said, citing sources in the communist state. Some of them were caught using unauthorized mobile phones.

North Korea has tried to block the influx of outside information that could damage the decades-long cult worship of its leader Kim Jong-Il and his late father, which has played a key role in keeping the troubled country afloat despite the global collapse of communism.

Source: http://www.upiasia.com/Society_Culture/2009/12/24/information_wall_coming_down_in_north_korea/4544/

Via Yimber Gaviria, Colombia