ARTICLE: "Weird but wired: Online dating in Pyongyang? Surely not," The Economist, 3 February 2006, p. 43.
The DPRK has an intranet, basically for the capital elite. Access to the WWW, however, is extremely restricted. As the mag says, "No one in Pyongyang has forgotten that glasnost and perestroika--openness and transparency--killed the Soviet Union."
Here's the hole in the dam: all those blackmarket cells in the north that China provides. As the web-enabled ones appear, then citizens will be able to jump the firewall and surf China's web universe (not our version of free, but light years beyond DPRK's).
As always, China's the main conduit for real change: the trusted agent we need to turn.
| Permalink |
