Kwangmyong, the North-Korea-Wide-Web | Hacker News Reader

Kwangmyong, the North-Korea-Wide-Web

en.wikipedia.org

45 pointsone01010114 comments

I found this amusing until I realized that it is coming out in Australia shortly

Fortunately, Tor is not blocked yet. (And you though "oppressive regimes" only happened to other people...)

Yeah, it's really quite frightening that a first-world country like Australia is going the route they are. Not that the US hasn't made gestures in the same direction, but Aussie seems to be following through with it.

Australia is the only country with a more restrictive Internet policy than North Korea. If recent news reports are to be believed, mate.

I realise this is probably half in jest, and I'm not saying I agree with what is happening in Australia.

But please remember that there is absolutely no comparison between the state of anything in North Korea and Australia.

Regardless my absolute disgust for any sort of censorship, I must admit that it would be quite interesting to look, through a sociologist-like point of view, how a whole nation has developed (or not developed) without any string attached to the rest of the world, to know what the people there are thinking and what's their idea of the rest of the world. Too bad it's almost impossible to get there and roam around for a western citizen.

Here's a great photo essay for anyone else fascinated by this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mytripsmypics/sets/721576048127...

and here some other travel journals: http://www.blogjam.com/north-korea/

Where is this technology coming from anyway? I thought most countries had trade embargos of some sort with north korea

I believe it's only the US & EU embargoing North Korea.

China has the strongest relations with North Korea -- and would be enough of a source for anything.

And since North Korea seems to have figured out nuclear weapons, early-90s-style walled-garden dial-up-networking, like Prodigy/Compuserve/AOL, shouldn't be too hard.

Reminds me of Prestel (UK) and Minitel (France).

This is a free service for public use.

speed?

Dialup

I wonder how many homes actually have phone lines.

Probably all of them, to make eavesdropping easier.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com