For many, it is a nation run by a moronic leader. For others, it is weirder than the common definition of weird. But no matter what one might say, there are few nations that paint absurdity, terror and, comical woes in real colours of living than North Korea than any other nation.
Peace and democracy are often misspelled terms lacking any real life vigour when it comes to Kim Jong Un-led North Korea, a country that often remains rampant in its endeavour to bomb United States.
But now, North Korea- that remains in news for more occasions than Dolphins remain in the ocean- has made an emphatic bit of news. It is one that concerns its Internet technology and the captivating ebb of the World Wide Web.
So, apparently, it turns out that pretty much everything that the high-tech, sophisticated modern of Internet offers is being utilized in its entirety by North Korea. Earlier this month, it was reported that whether it is for consultation purposes used by doctors and medicine-experts or for online video conferencing or even for streaming lectures given at the prestigious Kim Il Sung University, the internet covers a wide spectrum of utility in every-day North Korea.
Even cash registers at major department stores are plugged into the web. But still, it would be an utter misnomer or absolute misrepresentation of facts to think the Internet isn’t regulated. A common factor, of course, for dictatorial style regimes is the presence of overwhelming amounts of regulation over free speech, tech and the Internet. North Korea is no Eritrea that despite being a dictatorship hasn’t regimented restrictions over the control and usage of the Internet.
It is a bit of an anomaly to find that on one hand, the Internet connects isolated dots of information and knowledge-sharing in North Korea and then, to be knowing that hardly anyone in this dystopian world owns a personal computer or even operates an email account. If that isn’t weird, then what is?
But that said, for Kim Jong Un, the pork-shaped dictator with possibly the worst hairdo for all worlds’ leaders, the Internet offers a hitherto less-seen two-fold opportunity. While on the one hand, it promises a world of limitless information, Kim Jong Un surely being North Korea’s first leader to have come of age with the Internet, it also extends to the highly isolated nation a great opportunity to mount devious cyber attacks on the West, especially on the heart of the United States.
Apart from offering a whole new dimension of social and political control, the Internet can be a vorpal weapon, wielding which North Korea can notoriously engage in false flag operations and target several of the developed economies of the west. It isn’t uncommon to find that only the trusted inner clique of Pyongyang have the relative freedom to surf the internet- for whatever catches their fancy- as the masses are kept within tight, stringent control of a North Korean intranet.
Interestingly, North Korea also functions with the combined strength of a certain army of web experts that it calls cyber-soldiers who are tasked to both take control of and launch cyber-attacks whenever the self-styled dictatorship desires. For the commoners though, the world of the internet is only through interface created by smartphones- a big market in this notorious part of Asia.