North Korea To Enable Mobile Internet Access — For Visitors Only

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that the reclusive country of North Korea is planning to enable 3G mobile internet access. It will not be available to the country's estimated one million mobile users, however. The service will be available only to international visitors, who have been allowed to bring their own mobile devices into the country since January of this year. The decision comes shortly after Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said enabling 3G internet in the country would be 'very easy' during his recent visit there. Currently, North Korean citizens can only access a small number of state-controlled sites. Might this decision open the door for some of them to surreptitiously access the open net?"

Re:It's no wonder Korea is so behind the times

[masternerdguy]

North Korea is an inexcusable mess of a country that wouldn't even exist today without China's external backing. China actually disagrees with North Korea's policies, but the *idea* of communism (even though NK's implementation is the worst on Earth) still holds a lot of patriotic sway in China (being the only successful communist country). I personally can't wait for NK to actually do something stupid so China drops their support (do you really think China wants to be involved in some kind of war because the "ally" they babysit is misbehaving, hell no!) and that little country collapses in on itself.

Re:wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, some people are curious by nature.

This travelogue by a countryman of mine is well worth reading, even though the English is a bit rusty:

http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.co.at/2008/04/how-everything-began.html [blogspot.co.at]

Re:Spying...

[AK Marc]

Yes, I've seen that. There's FUD in there, but no facts. Has it ever happened at least once? What did they install? Nope, no facts, just scare stories about what "could" happen. But there are real stories with real names and verifiable facts about siezed laptops in the US. But that's ok, because FUD lies trump reality because we like the US better than China.