North Korean Economy Watch

UPDATE (2011-5-19): Martyn Williams writes in PC World:

Control of North Korea’s top-level Internet domain has been formally assigned to a government-backed venture after the previous operator, a German company, let the national domain disappear from the Internet for several months.

The dot-kp domain was officially transferred at the beginning of May to Star Joint Venture, a North Korean-Thai company that has been chartered with providing “modern Internet services” to the insular country. Star JV has been in de-facto control of the domain name since December last year.

Dot-kp was first assigned in 2007 to the Korea Computer Center, one of the country’s top computer science establishments. KCC had agreed to let a German businessman, Jan Holtermann, set up a satellite Internet connection to North Korea and run the dot-kp domain through a German company, KCC Europe.

The company ran the domain and a handful of North Korean websites from servers in Berlin until mid 2010 when they suddenly disappeared from the Internet.

“In 2010, the authoritative name servers for the .KP became completely lame, effectively stopping the top-level domain from operating,” said the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the body that coordinates basic addressing functions of the Internet, in a report published this week.

“Korea Computer Center reached out to KCC Europe, its Germany-based technical registry provider, to have service reinstated. After several months without response, Korea Computer Center terminated KCCE’s agreement to operate the .KP domain,” the report said.

At around the same time, Star JV was beginning to bring Internet connectivity to Pyongyang via China. The company had already taken control of IP (Internet Protocol) addresses long reserved for North Korea but never used, and it brought the country’s first website onto the global Internet around October 2010.

The site, for the domestic news agency, was initially only accessible via its IP address since the dot-kp DNS (Domain Name Service) was still under the control of KCC Europe.

But that changed in December “in light of the continuing lack of operation of the dot-kp,” said the IANA report.

The Korea Computer Center supported giving Star JV interim control of the dot-kp domain and the first websites began using North Korean domain names in January this year.

The change was made official in May when the IANA database was updated to show Star JV as the coordinator of the domain.

Several attempts to contact Jan Holtermann, the German businessman that ran KCC Europe, both for this story and previous stories have proved unsuccessful. German company records show KCC Europe was dissolved on Jan. 31 this year.

ORIGINAL POST (2011-5-5): According to Martyn Williams:

Control of North Korea’s dot-KP Internet top-level domain has been assigned to Star JV, the North Korean-Thai joint venture that’s behind the recent wiring of Pyongyang to the global Internet.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which administers country code domains, updated its database on Monday, May 2, to assign the KP domain to “Star Joint Venture Company.”

This means control for the KP domain now rests with Star JV. Star took control of North Korea’s Internet address space last year and has been building up the North Korean Internet.

Switch of control to Star doesn’t come as a surprise as the company started issuing dot-kp domains in January this year. It’s a further sign that the joint venture between the North Korean government and Thailand’s Loxley Pacific is now responsible for the DPRK’s Internet links with the rest of the world.

The administrative and technical contact details are now listed as:

President
Star Joint Venture Company
Potonggang2-dong, Potonggang District
Pyongyang
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Email: mptird@star-co.net.kp
Voice: +8502 381 3180
Fax: +8502 381 4418

That’s the address and contact details of the international relations department of North Korea’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

The website for domain name registration is listed as www.star.co.kp. This website came online in the last few weeks, but it’s still being built.

Administrative control of the domain name was previously held by the Korea Computer Center with technical control in the hands of Jan Holtermann, the German businessman who previously ran a satellite-Internet connection to the country.

Martyn has been keeping an eye on the Star JV co for some time.  See here, here, and here.

Previous posts on the Korea Computer Center are here.

According to Bloomberg:

North Korea was responsible for paralyzing the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation’s computer network in April in a second online attack in two months linked to the Kim Jong Il regime, South Korean prosecutors said.

Hackers used similar techniques employed in cyber assaults that targeted websites in South Korea and the U.S. earlier this year and in 2009, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office said in an e-mailed statement today. The Unification Ministry criticized the “provocation” and urged North Korea to stop such attacks immediately.

The network of the bank better known in Korean as Nonghyup was shut down on April 12, keeping its almost 20 million clients from using automated teller machines and online banking services. In all of the three bouts of online attacks, a method called “distributed denial service” was used, according to the statement.

Under the DDoS tactic, malicious codes infect computers to trigger mass attacks against targeted websites, according to Ahnlab Inc. (053800), South Korea’s largest maker of antivirus software.

Nonghyup will spend 510 billion won ($477.2 million) by 2015 to boost network security, the bank said in an e-mailed statement. The company received 1,385 claims for compensation related to the network disruption as of May 2, and 1,361 of them have been settled, according to the statement.

North Korea’s postal ministry was responsible for the 2009 attacks, Won Sei Hoon, head of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, told lawmakers in October that year.

Attacks in March this year targeted 40 South Korean websites, including at the presidential office, the National Intelligence Service, and Ministry of National Defense. They were traced to the same Internet Protocol addresses used in the 2009 episodes, South Korean police said last month.

The hackers prepared for the April 12 attack on Nonghyup for more than seven months, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office said today.

According the Hankyoreh:

Prosecutors stated that a notebook computer belonging to an employee of the company managing the Nonghyup server became a so-called “zombie PC” after being infected in September 2010 by malicious code distributed by the North Korean Reconnaissance General Bureau, and that North Korea subsequently operated the notebook remotely to attack the Nonghyup computer network.

North Korea did not initially target Nonghyup, but the bank was exposed as a result, prosecutors explained.

As bases for this conclusion, prosecutors cited the fact that one of the IP addresses for the server ordering the attack was confirmed to be administered by the North Korean Reconnaissance General Bureau, along with the strong similarity between the malicious code and distribution methods with previous DDoS attacks concluded to be North Korea’s doing.

Some experts at security companies reacted with skepticism to the prosecutors’ contentions. One expert questioned the explanation that the parties behind the attack used the same overseas command server employed by hackers in the DDoS attacks for operating zombie PCs, noting that its IP address was blocked through the Korea Internet Security Agency.

A computer systems design expert said, “The back door program on the notebook used in the attack could not function if linked with Nonghyup’s internal network, which is cut off from the Internet.”

The argument is that it would have been effectively impossible for an outside party to precisely determine and attack Nonghyup’s computer system structure and work currents and those notebooks authorized for top access without assistance from an inside party.

When questioned about their evidence of North Korea’s direct involvement, prosecutors reiterated that they could not disclose the information because it was related to national security.

The story was also covered by the Daily NK and the AFP.

The Choson Ilbo reports that 200 additional infected computers have been discovered.

Authorities have discovered 200 more so-called zombie computers that have been infected with viruses North Korean hackers planted in September last year. They came across them in the process of investigating the laptop computer of an IBM employee that was used to paralyze the computer network of agricultural cooperative lender Nonghyup.

Prosecutors said Monday that the National Intelligence Service identified 201 port numbers that have been infected with viruses so that they can serve as zombie computers, and the IBM employee’s laptop is one of them. This means not only Nonghyup but any state agency could be the target of a North Korean cyber attack.

Growing Sophistication

South Korean authorities and computer experts say the Nonghyup incident demonstrates the increasing sophistication of North Korea’s cyber warfare capabilities. During a so-called distributed denial-of-service attack on July 7, 2009, North Korean hackers used 435 servers in 61 different countries to spread just one type of virus. During a DDoS attack in March this year, 746 servers in 70 countries were used to plant more than three different types of viruses. The cyber attack against Nonghyup involved a different virus which directly infiltrates the computer network of a bank and deletes not just data but its own tracks as well.

Authorities say finding the 200 zombie computers is as difficult as locating a mole planted by North Korean intelligence. As long as the zombie PCs remain dormant, it is impossible to trace them.

The Korea Herald raises points of skepticism:

Despite prosecutors’ announcement pinpointing North Korea as the culprit for the April 12 cyber attack, security experts say that it is difficult to identify its instigator given the complicated nature of the hacking process.

On Tuesday, investigators at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office said the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the North’s premier intelligence body, orchestrated the “unprecedented cyber terror” that paralyzed the banking system of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, or Nonghyup, for several weeks.

They said that the conclusion came as the methods used in the previous two cyber attacks on a number of key South Korean government and business websites in July 2009 and in March last year were similar to the ones used in last month’s attack.

They also stressed that one of the Internet Protocol addresses used in the attack on the cooperative was identical to that used in last year’s attack.

Experts, however, said that evidence of North Korea’s involvement in the worst-ever cyber attack was too “weak” and only based on “circumstantial assumptions” and that the case could remain unaddressed forever given that identifying the hackers is extremely difficult.

First of all, experts pointed out that hackers usually change IP addresses frequently or use someone else’s address to disguise their identity. Thus, an IP address cannot serve as credible evidence to identify the culprit.

“It appears that prosecutors believe the owner of an empty house with a certain address is the thief who broke into the house while the owner is away,” said a security expert in a media interview on condition of anonymity.

Prosecutors also presented a Media Access Control address which was found on a laptop computer used by the North to launch the attack as evidence. But experts say that the address cannot be reliable as it kept changing on the Internet.

The hacking methods similar to the previous North Korean attacks cannot be clear evidence, either, to hold the North responsible, experts added. They said hackers tend to copy effective methods used by others.

During the announcement, investigative authorities stressed that they could not reveal all pieces of “critical” evidence to the public, citing security concerns. However, their concerns fail to ease doubts over whether the weeks-long result of the prosecutorial investigation is credible.

The North has long focused on cyber warfare. It is known to have established many college-level institutions to produce hackers and stationed cyber warfare personnel in China. The North has used cyber attacks to spy on South Korean government bodies or glean crucial intelligence.

Read more about the DPRK organizations thought to be responsible here.

There are two KCNA web pages.  The older one is run by the Chongryun in Japan (here). The newer one is managed by the Korea Computer Center (KCC). This newer web page was recently updated. It went off line a few days ago and emerged today with a different format. You can see a screen shot above.

The URL is slightly different.  The previous version of the KCC’s KCNA web page was http://www.kcna.kp/kor.  The new one is simply http://www.kcna.kp. The default language is Korean, but if you can read a little Korean, you can find the language settings and change the language to:

English: http://www.kcna.kp/goHome.do?lang=eng

Spanish: http://www.kcna.kp/goHome.do?lang=spa

Japanese: http://www.kcna.kp/goHome.do?lang=jpn

Another great change has been the addition of a reasonably functional search bar.  The older Chongryun KCNA web page has no search function (Hooray for the Stalin Search Engine).  The previous version of the KCC’s KCNA web page contained a search bar that was too small to type “Kim Jong il”.  Now you can do a search for “The Great Leader Comrade Kim Jong il”–which produces one result.

No doubt Martyn Williams will have more to say about this page when the sun gets to his side of the planet.  Today he reports on the launch of the DPRK’s new Voice of Korea web page.

Below are some recent posts on the DPRK’s moves to the internet:

KCNA re-launched on DPRK-owned IP address

Hackers find creative way to celebrate KJU birthday

DPRK organization opens Twitter account

Uriminzokkiri on Youtube

Naenara, TaeMun, and KCNA get new URLs

Martyn William’s list of DPRK web pages

According to Yonhap:

North Korea has begun to demand that every personal and electronic storage device in the country be registered in an apparent effort to crack down on outside information that may contain sensitive news about Middle East uprisings, a government source said Friday.

The measure took effect early this year and has led to the confiscation of a considerable number of electronic devices, the South Korean source said, declining to be identified.

The communist country is also allowing its notoriously harsh policing organ to have the right to approve the use of a mobile phone by an individual, the source said.

More than 300,000 mobile phones are believed to be in use in North Korea, which strictly controls the flow of information in and out of its territory in an effort to keep its 24 million people brainwashed and make them conform to the regime.

And according to the Straits Times (Singapore):

Pyongyang has ordered institutions and households to report on how many computers and even portable data storage devices such as USBs and MP3 players they own, early in 2011, according to a Seoul government source.

The North Korean police agency is in charge of keeping track of the IT gadgets possessed by everyone, presses criminal charges against those who failed to report and even confiscates many of the gadgets, the source said.

…

The reclusive communist state has been running a unit of authorities for years to crack down on North Koreans watching South Korean soap operas or foreign movies, which they call ‘non-socialist video’.

Pyongyang is also reinforcing a crackdown on use of cellphones and the Internet. It is estimated that more than 400,000 mobile phones are being used in North Korea. North Koreans are required to get government permission to use cell phones. They are also banned from bringing them into the country or using cell phones bought overseas.

Foreign members of international non-governmental organisations working in North Korea were also told to follow domestic regulations on cell phones.

It appears that the DPRK is attempting to treat these products the same way it has treated radios for decades.  Lankov writes in his book, North of the DMZ:

Certainly, a person with some technical knowledge can easily make the necessary adjustments and transform such a receiver into a real radio. To prevent this from happening, the police undertake periodic random inspections of all registered receivers. Controlling the correct use of radio receivers is also an important duty of the heads of the so-called people’s groups or inminban. The head of an inminban can break into any house at any time (even in the dead of night) to check for the possible use of a non-registered receiver.

If a North Korean has access to foreign currency, he or she can buy a foreign-made radio set in one of the numerous hard-currency shops. However, after purchase the radio set was subjected to minor surgery in a police workshop — its tuning had to be fixed, so it could only receive official Pyongyang broadcasts (it appears this practice is declining in recent years).

The control was never perfect…

Of course it is questionable as to whether the inminban play a reliable role in “law enforcement” these days.  Instead, individuals in these positions seem to play an increasing role in shielding their residents from Pyongyang’s dictates rather than assuming a pure-exploitation position.  In the past we have seen how inminban effectiveness can affect local real estate prices.  Also, when the government needed to apologize for the disastrous “recent” currency reform, they did so in person to the inminban representatives.

Given the proliferation of electronic devices, particularly in Pyongyang, in combination with the capacity of local police to carry out this mission, I believe the actual result of this policy will be the registration of “some” electronic devices along with the hiding and bribing required to keep others off the books.  So inspection police just got a raise!

UPDATE 3 (4/1/2011): The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is considering measures against North Korea after the reclusive state was accused of jamming satellite navigation signals.  According to Flight Global:

The organisation is intending to co-operate with South Korea over the matter, says the Korean ministry of foreign affairs.

It follows a meeting between Korean foreign minister Kim Sung-Hwan and ICAO secretary general Raymond Benjamin yesterday.

The ministry says that ICAO has accepted its position of “pointing out the illegality” of Global Positioning System signal jamming by North Korea in early March, and that a “recurrence of such [an] incident must not occur”.

It also says that ICAO has agreed to “co-operate with Korea in taking necessary measures” should there be another incident, because North Korea’s action “threatens civil aviation safety, of not only Korea but also other countries”.

ICAO was not immediately available to comment on the foreign ministry’s statement.

UPDATE 2 (3/20/2011): According to Strategy Page:

Since the 18th, North Korea has been directing a GPS jamming signal across the border, and towards the southern capital, Seoul. The jamming signal can be detected up to a hundred kilometers south of the DMZ. The North Korea GPS jammers are based on known Russian models that North Korea bought and copied. The usual response for GPS jamming is to bomb the jammers, which are easy to find (jamming is nothing more than broadcasting a more powerful version of the frequency you want to interfere with). But such a response could lead to more fighting, so the south is still considering what to do. The jamming is a nuisance more than a threat, and most military equipment is equipped with electronics and other enhancements to defeat it. This is the third time in a year that the north has attacked the south. The first was the torpedoing of a South Korean warship a year ago, then the shelling of a South Korean island off the west coast last November. Now this jamming, and DDOS attacks on government websites.

UPDATE 1 (3/15/2011): According to Yonhap, the DPRK has rejected a letter of complaint from the South over GPS jamming:

North Korea on Tuesday rejected a letter from South Korea demanding that the communist nation stop sending jamming signals across the border, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said.

South Korea’s communications watchdog, Korea Communications Commission (KCC), asked the ministry earlier in the day to send the North a letter in which it complained of the trouble caused by disruptions to Global Positioning System (GPS) signals in the South.

South Korean officials have blamed North Korea for jamming the signals early this month in what they believe was an attempt to interrupt ongoing military drills between South Korean and U.S. forces. GPS-based mobile phones and certain military equipment in the South’s northwestern areas experienced minor errors due to the disruption, according to officials.

“Following KCC’s request, we tried to deliver to the North a letter of complaint written in the name of KCC Chairman Choi See-joong through the liaison office at Panmunjom,” the ministry said, referring to the inter-Korean truce village. “But the North’s liaison officer refused to receive it.”

In the letter, the KCC said it demanded that the North “instantly stop jamming activities and provide measures against similar incidents in the future.”

The commission also wrote that the jamming of GPS signals is “causing an inconvenience to our people and threatening their safety,” adding that such actions are “unacceptable” under International Telecommunications Union regulations. Both South and North Korea are members of the Union.

North Korea was accused of jamming GPS signals across the border last year, but this is the first time the South has tried to lodge an official complaint on the matter.

South Korea has already sought international action against the sabotage, with the foreign ministry sending a letter of inquiry to a United Nations agency in charge of information and communication technologies, a presidential official said earlier this month.

ORIGINAL POST (3/8/2011): According to the AFP (via Singapore’s Straits Times):

Seoul confirmed on Monday that North Korea has been trying since Friday to jam communications signals across the border, where the US and South Korea are holding a major joint military exercise.

Signals are being emitted from near the North’s border city of Kaesong to disrupt navigational devices using GPS (the Global Positioning System) north-west of Seoul, the Korea Communications Commission said.

They caused minor inconvenience on Friday and Saturday, it said, while weaker signals are ongoing. ‘Intermittent (GPS) disruptions are still continuing, although signals are weak,’ the commission said in a statement, adding that it was working with government agencies and security authorities to counter the jamming.

The South’s defence ministry confirmed the intermittent failure of GPS receivers last week, but refused to give details for security reasons. It was not clear whether the disruption caused problems to the war games.

The North’s military operates dozens of bases equipped for an electronic war to disrupt South Korean military communications, the South’s Yonhap news agency said. The communist country has imported GPS jamming devices from Russia, while South Korea uses French equipment to disrupt or monitor the North’s military communications systems, it said.

How do these kinds of attacks work and how effective are they? According to Wired:

North Korea is reportedly jamming Global Positioning System (GPS) signals in South Korea, possibly in an attempt to interfere with the U.S.-South Korean annual Key Resolve/Foal Eagle drills, which kicked off on February 28.

GPS jammers work by sending a signal that interferes with the communication between a satellite and GPS receiver. It’s a relatively simple operation, with relatively short-range effects. Thus far, cell phones used by civilians and troops and some military equipment have been put on the fritz by the disruption attempts.

But the juiciest target for the North’s jamming efforts would be the U.S. and South Korean arsenals of GPS-directed bombs.

If it works just right, the GPS jammer can cut off a satellite-guided bomb’s ability to guide itself to target. The bomb simply continues hurtling towards the ground in the direction it was when it lost contact with a satellite.

However, these weapons have other means of guiding themselves in the event of jamming. Take the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), a guidance kit that’s strapped to older, “dumb” bombs to make them more accurate. In addition to GPS, the JDAM kit comes equipped with an Inertial Navigation System (INS), which measures a bomb’s acceleration and uses the information to plot its way to a target. In the event a JDAM’s GPS signal is successfully jammed, it can rely on its INS to guide it, although accuracy is reduced from 5 to 30 meters.

That’s not the only backup for U.S. bombs. “Increasingly you see that there are multi-mode smart munitions that have both GPS and laser guided so that if one is not working, the other can,” says John Pike, a defense and aerospace expert and president of Globalsecurity.org.

Though he’s not familiar with the specific systems used by the North Korea, Pike says other incidents make him think the U.S. might not have much to worry about in this case.

“The jammings that I have been aware of in other instances I would place into the category of ’seriously annoying.’”

North Korea is believed to have both a GPS jamming system imported from Russia and a modified version its been shopping around the Middle East, according to South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo. Russia reportedly sold a GPS jamming system to Iraq on the eve of the second Gulf War. And in case you missed that one, jamming wasn’t much of an issue for U.S. bombs.

But jamming might not be the only info war trick North Korea’s been up to lately.

Last week, at least 29 websites were affected by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, which targeted a number of South Korean government, U.S. military and private sector sites. At the moment, the origin of the web traffic flood remains unknown, but North Korea is widely suspected because of its prior history. In June 2009, South Korea intelligence attributed a series of DDoS attacks which targeted a similar portfolio of sites to North Korea.

Which organizations in the DPRK carry put these kinds of operations? The Choson Ilbo highlights the well known Mirim College for Electronic Warfare Research

Pictured above on Google Earth: Suspected initial location of the Mirim War College in Pyongyang (39.013904°, 125.877156°) (via Michael Madden).  Reports now indicate it has been moved to the other side of Pyongyang in Hyonjesan-guyok.

According to the Choson Ilbo:

Pyongyang began developing electronic warfare capabilities in 1986 when it founded Mirim University, the present-day Automation University, to train specialists.

A defector who graduated from the university recalled that 25 Russian professors were invited from the Frunze Military Academy in the former Soviet Union to give lectures, and some 100 to 110 hackers were trained there every year.

Mirim is a five-year college. The Amrokgang College of Military Engineering, the National Defense University, the Air Force Academy and the Naval Academy are also reportedly training electronic warfare specialists.

Jang Se-yul of North Korean People’s Liberation Front, an organization of former North Korean military officers and servicemen, recalled that when he fled the North in 2007, “I heard that the North Korean military has about 30,000 electronic warfare specialists, including some 1,200 personnel under two electronic warfare brigades.”

“Each Army corps operates an automation unit, or an electronic warfare unit.” Jang used to be an officer of a North Korean electronic warfare command.

Material published by the North Korean Army in 2005 quotes leader Kim Jong-il as saying, “Modern war is electronic warfare. Victory or defeat of a modern war depends on how to carry out electronic warfare.”

In a 2006 report, the South Korean military warned North Korean hackers could paralyze the command post of the U.S. Pacific Command and damage computer systems on the U.S. mainland.

Experts believe that the North’s 600 or so special hackers are as good as their CIA counterparts. They attempted in August 2008 to hack the computer of a colonel in South Korean Field Army headquarters. In 1999, the U.S. Defense Department said the most frequent visitor to its website was traced to North Korea.

Due to economic difficulties since the 1990s, the North Korean regime had a hard time boosting its conventional military capabilities and instead focused on strengthening so-called asymmetric capabilities that would allow it to achieve relatively large effects with small expenses. That includes not only nuclear and biochemical weapons and missiles but also special forces and hackers.

FAS has more on the Mirim-based school here.

A couple of years ago, the Daily NK mentioned another possible contender: Moranbong University

Pictured above on Google Earth: Korean Workers’ Party Building 3 complex in Pyongyang (39.057894°, 125.758494°)

According to the Daily NK:

Moranbong University, which is directly managed by the Operations Department of the Workers’ Party, is said to be leading technical developments in cyber war against foreign countries.

A North Korean source said in a telephone interview with Daily NK on the 10th, “I heard that the U.S. and South Korea were attacked. If it were confirmed that North Korea was responsible, it would have been by the graduates of Moranbong University.”

According to the source, since the mid-1990s, the Workers’ Party has been watching the worldwide trend whereby the IT field started dominating, and founded Moranbong University in 1997 in order to train experts in data-processing, code-breaking, hacking and other high-tech skills. The results of new student selections, curricula and training are reported only to the Director of the Operations Department, Oh Keuk Ryul.

The foundation of the University was spurred by the North Korean invasion of the South in Kangreung, Kangwon Province in 1996. 26 North Korean special agents tried to infiltrate South Korea after passing under the Northern Limit Line in a special, mini-submarine, but they were all killed or committed suicide after the operation failed. After that, there was a debate within the South Korean Liaison Office under the Operations Department of the Party about the sending of spies to the South and collecting intelligence through contact with resident spies in South Korean society. After listening to such suggestions, Kim Jong Il approved the establishment of the university.

It is a five-year university which selects 30 freshmen every year. The university makes every freshman a military first lieutenant. In sophomore year, students take courses in martial arts, shooting and other special skills, and then they take courses in assembly languages, wiretapping, code-breaking, and hacking.

Graduates are dispatched to the headquarters of the Operations Department of the Party or local South Korea Liaison Offices, where they are put in charge of collecting intelligence from intelligence organizations and the military of South Korea, the U.S., Japan, China and other neighboring countries, or demolishing programs.

Since 2003, more than 200 graduates from the University have started working for the Operations Department or as professors of Moranbong University. Some of them have been dispatched to China in order to train in international techniques or to earn foreign currency as Chosun Computer Center (KCC) workers.

According to the source, Moranbong Univeristy is better than Mirim University, the former main educational institution for North Korean hackers, in terms of equipment, technology and curricula. It is located in Jung-district, just across from the No. 3 Government Building, in which the United Front Department, the Liaison Department and the Operation Department are stationed. The real purpose of the university is not officially revealed even to general agents of the Operations Department, because it is treated as top secret.

The source concluded, “Wiretapping has its limits because of a lack of equipment, but they have world-class hacking technology.”

The Daily NK,  Choson Ilbo, and Strategy Page later posted additional information on these organizations.

South Korea is said to be seeking additional sanctions on the DPRK for these activities.  According to Yonhap:

But they said the North should not go unpunished for the sabotage, with a senior presidential official hinting at the possibility of seeking sanctions against the communist nation.

A charter of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) bans a country from doing damage to electric waves of other nations. Both South and North Korea are members of the ITU.

The foreign ministry already sent a letter of inquiry to a United Nations agency in charge of information and communication technologies, the presidential official said on condition of anonymity.

Read the full stories here:
N. Korea launches electronic attacks on S. Korea
AFP (Straits Times)
3/7/2011

North Korea Jams GPS in War Game Retaliation
Wired
Adam Rawnsley
3/7/2011

N.Korea Trains Up Hacker Squad
Choson Ilbo
3/9/2011

Mecca for North Korean Hackers
Daily NK
Jung Kwon Ho
7/13/2009

UPDATE (1/14/2011): More form Martyn Williams here.

UPDATE (1/13/2011): According to Yonhap:

South Korea has blocked its people in the South from accessing Web sites using North Korea’s national Web domain name, saying the sites contain “illegal information” under the nation’s anti-communism and security laws, officials said Thursday.

The blockage by the South’s state-run Communications Standards Commission came less than a day after an expert said North Korea had renewed the use of its own national Web domain name of “.kp” in an apparent effort to widen public access to its propaganda sites.

The commission started blocking Web sites using the “.kp” domain from Internet users in the South attempting to view those sites, including an Internet portal with an address of http://www.naenara.com.kp, officials said.

“We continue to monitor propaganda activities by North Korea throughout the Internet,” said a commission official. “The Web sites were briefly accessible (in South Korea) because North Korea used its national domain (.kp) it had not used usually.”

Earlier in the day, Martyn Williams of IT research group IDG said in an e-mail that he found http://www.naenara.com.kp operating over the weekend while http://www.friend.com.kp and http://www.star.edu.kp likely came into use at about the same time. All of the sites use “.kp” — assigned to North Korea — as their final domain names.

“It was assigned in 2007 and managed by a company based in Germany, but the domain and a handful of sites also managed by the company disappeared in the second half of last year for reasons that are still unclear,” he wrote in his online article.

The re-emergence of the domain name represents “a step-up in the country’s Internet presence,” Williams said.

Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea professor at Seoul’s Dongguk University, said, “North Korea seems to be trying to increase public access to its sites as part of its recent online propaganda campaign.”

The sites have separate addresses to allow Internet users to access them. According to Williams, the sites, which include one that represents the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), all have their servers based in the communist country.

In the e-mail, the Tokyo-based technology expert said the main record for all the .kp names was updated on Jan. 3.

“So that’s the earliest any of these sites could have reappeared,” he said.

In recent months, North Korea has opened accounts at world-famous sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, drawing wide public attention. But the one on Facebook no longer operates while its Twitter and YouTube accounts were apparently hacked last weekend.

Naenara at http://www.naenara.com.kp is a multilingual portal site, and http://www.friend.com.kp is mainly an English Web site run by an organ that handles exchanges with other countries. The KCNA has its Web site at http://www.star.edu.kp.

South Korea bans its citizens from accessing pro-North Korea propaganda sites, citing the technical state of war it has been in with Pyongyang since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce.

UPDATE (1/11/2011): Martyn Williams at North Korea Tech offers some more information:

Offline for months, the service has resumed via servers run by Star JV, the Internet joint venture formed by the North Korean government and Thailand’s Loxley Pacific. As reported previously, dot-kp was run by the KCC Europe operation in Germany but went offline in the third quarter of last year.

Two websites are already available via KP domain names. Both are hosted on the same web server. The first, Naenara, has been available for a few months via an IP address and the second, Friend.com.kp, has been offline since its domain name disappeared. You can find out more about each site in The North Korean Website List.

I’ve done a little digging around in the DNS (domain name system) records for KP and found the following eight KP top-level domains have been prepared for future use: net.kp, com.kp, edu.kp, gov.kp, org.kp, rep.kp, tra.kp and co.kp.

Both Naenara and Friend are already using com.kp. A domain name has been prepared for the Star Internet provider: star.net.kp, and one for the state-run Korea Posts and Telecommunications Co.: kptc.kp. I can’t find any other registered domain names at present.

Friends.com.kp is the web page of the Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (aka TaeMun.  In Korean: 대외문화련락위원회)

UPDATE (1/9/2011): The Naenara URL came back online this weekend. The IP address http://175.45.176.14 has been replaced by the more memorable http://www.naenara.com.kp, though the IP address still works.  The Naenara mirror site, kcckp.net, apparently did not survive the transition.    Content from 2008 to the present is available, but all the content from 2005-2007 remains off-line and probably will not return.

ORIGINAL POST (Oct 28, 2010): North Korea’s premier web outlet, Naenara, was frequently inactive in the month of August.  Sometimes it was there, other times it was not.  The web portal was up for one day in September under a slightly different URL.  It has not appeared at all under its original URLs in October.

Today, Martyn Williams, who broke the story on the DPRK’s acquisition of a block of IP addresses, reports that Naenara has been migrated to the new DPRK addresses alongside the newly created KCNA web page.

According to Martyn:

North Korea’s Naenara website is back. The site went offline around early September when the dot-kp domain name space went down.

Naenara is run by Pyongyang’s Korea Computer Center and offers news, photos, shopping, tourism information and MP3 files from North Korea.

It’s running inside North Korea’s recently-activated domestic IP address space, but isn’t working perfectly. Some of the links point to dot-kp addresses, which are still not working. It’s worth keeping an eye on.

You can find it at http://175.45.176.14/en/

The IP address Martyn mentions is for the English version.

The Korean version is here: http://175.45.176.14/ko/

The French version is here: http://175.45.176.14/fr/

The Russian version is here: http://175.45.176.14/ru/

The German Version is here: http://175.45.176.14/de/

The Spanish version is here: http://175.45.176.14/sp/

The Chinese version is here: http://175.45.176.14/ch/

The Japanese version is here: http://175.45.176.14/ja/

The Arabic version is here: http://175.45.176.14/ar/

I will go through the new site to see if it is different in any way.  One obvious difference is that the archived materials from 2005 & 2007 are gone.

UPDATE  (1/11/2011): The DPRK accuses the ROK of hacking its web pages.  According to the AP (Via Washington Post):

North Korea is accusing South Korean Internet users of hacking into one of its websites, calling the behavior a provocation aimed at undermining its national dignity.

The North’s government-run Uriminzokkiri website said Tuesday that South Korean Internet users recently deleted articles on the site and posted messages slandering the North’s dignity.

It accuses the South Korean government of being behind the cyber attacks and urges it to apologize.

Anti-North Korea articles and pictures were reportedly posted on the site over the weekend, with one image showing leader Kim Jong Il and his son and heir-apparent Kim Jong Un kneeling down before what appears to be a Chinese emperor. [See image here]

UPDATE (1/11/2011): I am not sure how I missed it, but it appears that the battle between North and South Korean hackers  we saw on the weekend of Jan 8 has been going on for a few weeks.  According to the AFP, last weekend’s hacks on the North Korean web pages was actually the second round of such efforts:

The South’s hackers last month sabotaged the official website [Uriminzokkiri] with a 12-line acrostic poem — purportedly in praise of the Kims but with the first letter of each line spelling out derogatory words about them.

Apparently North Korean hackers responded to this with a DDOS attack last week, and that was followed by the South Korean hacker attacks over the weekend on the Uriminzokkiri YouTube and Twitter accounts.

UPDATE (1/11/2011): A Chinese-language blog focused on the DPRK printed a small screen shot of the hack job on the Uriminzokkiri page itself which features Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un kneeling before a Chinese emperor:

Click image for larger version

UPDATE (1/9/2010): The Uriminzokkiri web page is back up, and the North Koreans have gotten control of their YouTube account and deleted the pirate video.  I have posted it to my own YouTube account for archival purposes.  You can see it here.  As of today, the North Koreans still have not deleted the pirate tweets:

우리 인민의 철천치 원쑤 김정일 력도와 아들 김정은을 몰아내여 새 세상을 만들자!

조선인민군대여! 인민군들을 먹일 돈으로 핵과 미싸일 개발에 14억 딸라를 랑비한 김정일 력도에게 총부리를 겨누자

로망난 김정일과 폭악한 새끼 돼지 김정은을 한 칼에 처단하여 우리도 남녘의 인민들처럼 이밥에 고깃국을 먹으면서 행복하게 살아보자

300만 인민들이 굶어죽고 얼어죽었는데 초호화별장에서 처녀들과 난잡한 술파티를 벌이고 있는 김정일을 처단하자

Mary has offered translations of these tweets in the comments.

Multiple users at http://dcinside.com are taking credit for the job.

ORIGINAL POST: In honor of Kim Jong-un’s (alleged) birthday, some hackers posted derogatory content to the DPRK’s Uriminzokkiri Twitter and YouTube accounts.  As of now, the content is still up, meaning that the hackers might have changed the passwords making it difficult to gain access to the accounts and remove the content.

Here is the most recent Uriminzokkiri Tweet:

According to the Washington Post, this roughly translates to “Let’s create a new world by rooting out our people’s sworn enemy Kim Jong Il and his son Kim Jong Eun!” (Please correct me if I am wrong)

According to Al Jazeera:

The four most recent messages posted on Saturday morning accuse the ruling family of exploiting the North Korean people to enjoy luxurious lives and develop nuclear arms and missiles.

One message called for an uprising to kill the Kims “with a sword”.

…

The apparent hacking of the site on Saturday, also Kim Jong-un’s birthday, is not the first such attack against the government’s online public relations efforts. Last month, the government’s official website, Uriminzokkiri, was reportedly duped into carrying a message that called the ruling family by harsh names.

Here is a link to the Youtube video:

The Noland/Haggard blog provides a translation:

“The truth behind the Kim Jong Un Train Incident [the reference is to reports of a derailed train SH/MN]”

Kim Jong Il: Ahh…Today is Kim Jong Un’s birthday. I wonder what he’d like for his presents? A Mercedez Benz? A Yacht? Money? Eh, whatever; I’ll just get him everything. Hahahaha.

Kim Jong Un: Get out of my way, you &@#@$@! [Runs over starving people; the corpses pile up on the railway.]

Hahahaha, these people are worthless!!

(Phone rings)

Hello?

Kim Jong Il: It’s me, your dad.

Kim Jong Un: Daddy, it’s my birthday; don’t you have any presents for me?

Kim Jong Il: Don’t worry, I just sent you your presents by train. I’m sure you’ll like them since they’re all crazy expensive. Haha.

Kim Jong Un: Oh, Okay Dad.

Train driver: Huh? What are those?

(The train runs into the corpses left on the railway by Kim Jong Un, and the presents hit Kim Jong Un one by one.)

Kim Jong Un: Dammit, who is it! Who left the &@#@$@! corpses on the railway! Damn it, if you get caught, you’re dead! Which bastard is it!

(Closing) They say Kim Jong Un is still looking for the culprit.

The irony is that KJU’s birthday seems to have garnered more attention outside the DPRK than from within.  Two articles this week point out that KJU’s ascension may still be debatable.  Read more in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

More information related to the hacking below:
1. Washington Post

2. Joshua Stanton, One Free Korea

3. Martyn Willams, North Korea Tech

4. Yonhap

5. Previous posts about the DPRK’s YouTube and Twitter accounts: here and here

6. Martyn Williams’ list of North Korea and North Korea-related web pages.

According to the Korea IT Times:

Eunbyul 2010 is a “Go” game, or commonly known as baduk in Korean; a software program developed by North Korea and played in North and South Korea. Winner of the third Computer Go Competition UED Cup in 2009, defeating so many outstanding programs from all over the world, Eunbyul 2010 is maintaining 3-dan at cyberoro.com and also ranks number one in sales in Japanese computer Go program market.

Go was invented by Chinese emperor Yao around 2300 BC, and has been widely played in the three countries in Far East: Korea, Japan, and China. In North Korea, the game was previously considered ‘the bourgeoisie game,’ thus a taboo; however since the 1990′s, the government has promoted Go as a traditional game that dates back to the Three States era; in addition it highlights the game as a brain exerciser that helps children develop their intelligence and old people keep their brains from aging. North Korea classifies Go – also called brain combat or brain fight in the country- as a type of martial arts just like Taekwondo or Ssireum, the Korean wrestling. North Korea’s Go was controlled by Chosun Sports Association, but under the command from Kim Jeong-il in 1990s; it was transferred to Chosun Martial Arts Federation that had better training environment, and subsequently categorized as public sport; now Taekwondo Commission is in charge of the game. Cho Daewon, 22 and MunYoungsam, 33, both amateur 7-dan, are noted as the top players in the country.

The estimated number of Go players in North Korea was around 10,000 in 1994, and is currently over 30,000. North Korean government encourages children to play Go as they believe the game has a significant effect on improving many brain activities such as concentration, observation, memory, imagination, and structure perception. Go classes are organized at kindergarten and the government tries to promote the game by holding various Go competitions for children.

Along with their passion for the game, North Korea is also regarded as one of the world’s best developer of computer Go game. Since early 1990s, the university computer development group composed of Kim Ilseong University, Kim Chek Engineering College, etc. – has developed computer Go programs. In 1995, Eunbyul Computer Technology Trade Center which is now called Korea Computer Center (KCC) focused on making software programs for Go, chess, Janggi and the like. The Go software ‘Eunbyul 2010 (see the picture above)’ – was imported into South Korea and is now available to the public consumers (here).

Eunbyul 2010 is the latest version of Eunbyul 2006, which was released in 2006 drawing attention to the industry. It integrated Monte Carlo Method into the algorithm of the original 2006 version, substantially improving the level of performance. While Eunbyul 2006 was rated level 6 according to Korea Baduk Association’s system, its 2010 counterpart attained 2-dan after the battles with random user at Cyber Oro, the internet Go match website. The user won 54 and lost 46games – 31 victories and 25 defeats in 1-dan battles and 23 victories and 21 defeats in 2-dan battles -hence, with 54 percent of winning rate. The software also won the International Computer Go Tournament held last year in Japan, sweeping all the matches and, thus, proving to be the best of its kind in the world.

There are two types of engines in Go programs. Tree search system, in theory, takes more than 361 (factorial) searches for one match because it has to create a move by move searching tool to explore every path. There is Monte Carlo method engine, which randomly selects one of the undefeated moves after proceeding hundreds of thousands of simulated battles to the end. Despite the relatively higher performance (on amateur beginner’s levels), this method was difficult to be adopted for commercial use because it required computation by either supercomputer or tens of CPUs from parallel wired computers.

4OneBiz, the sales rights holder in South Korea, signed the contract with North Korea in June 2006 before beginning the sales in the South. In September the same year, the company held an 8-day workshop in which an engineer who spent over a decade on developing Go programs at KCC and a professional5-dan Go player participated in the activities. The main objective of the workshop was to decide whether they should improve the performance of the existing Eunbyul program or develop a completely new engine from the design. Ultimately, they chose the latter.

North and South Korea agreed to develop a whole new level of Go program engine that contains tactical data, which narrows down the potential moves to only a few, so as to make the next move in a simpler way. They also aim to make a program with optimal performance that is light and fast enough to be installed in a mobile device. South Korea provides an expert-levelalgorithm design whereas North Korean developers will take charge of creating a program based on the theory and basic algorithm. This new expert-level Go engine is already completed, and its automatic evaluator and situation-determination module are currently being supplied to a popular Korean Go website. Further use is currently under negotiation. One engineer who specialized in expert-level Go engine and gave up after spending more than 10 years on developing the engine once contended that “it is beyond human capability to develop an amateur-expert level of Go engine.”

However, the recent success can be largely contributed to the thoughtful collaboration between South and North Korea: i.e., the North Korean engineers spent more than a decade focused and devoted to Go engine development, and South Korea’s also has well-known competence in Go game. The incredible synergy was all thanks to the socialist system of North Korea where the engineers could stick to the Go engine development project for nearly 20 years regardless of its profitability; and also the capitalist South fostered the best Go players with its wealth and the professional Go player system. For those reasons, North Korea could have developed Eunbyul 2010, the best artificial intelligence Go program in the world.

Read the full story here:
North Korea’s Artificial Intelligence Go Software
Korea IT Times
Choi Sung, Professor of computer science at Namseoul University
1/4/2011

Pictured Above (Google Earth): Pyongyang Information Center and Annex

* AKA Pyongyang Informatics Center

Choi Sung, Professor of computer science at Namseoul University, writes in the IT Times:

I have been writing about North Korea’s IT industry since the start of this year. In this installment, I would like to introduce North Korea’s major information and communications institution. If the Choson Computer Centre (KCC) is called the centerpiece of North Korea’s IT R&D, Pyongyang Information Centre (PIC) is the mecca of their software development. The PIC, founded on July 15, 1986, was jointly funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Jochongnyeon (the pro-Pyongyang federation of Korean residents in Japan). It is situated in Kyong-Heung dong near the Botong River in Pyongyang.

The PIC was created as the Pyongyang Program Development Company and changed its name to Pyongyang Electronic Calculator Operator in October of 1988 and then again to Pyongyang Information Centre (PIC) in July of 1991. As of now, the best and the brightest of North Korea’s IT talent is developing various kinds of programs and devices at the PIC: nearly 300 IT professionals, who graduated from the North’s most prestigious universities such as Kim Il-sung University, Kim Chaek University of Technology and Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), are on the payroll of the PIC.

On the overseas front, the PIC has its branches in China, Japan and Singapore, where PIC IT experts are working on software development, and has teamed up with foreign companies to jointly develop software programs and expedite technology transfers. The PIC, North Korea’s major software developer, has been at the vanguard of these following areas: language information processing, machinery translation, document editing, global IMEs (Input Message Editor), computer-aided design (CAD), networks, database systems, fonts, multimedia, dynamic images, etc. For instance, the PIC’s database development taskforce consists of about 40 IT experts, who are all working on the development of information management systems for production lines, companies and other institutions. The PIC’s publishing group has been engaged in various R&D projects from the development of Chang-Deok, a PC word processor, to DTP (desk top publishing) systems for Mac computers. Last but not least, the PIC’s application software group is keen on CAD, virtual reality and the development of project management devices. The PIC has been developing a plethora of software products: embedded software, CAD, image processing, Korean-language information processing and systems, network management systems, multimedia dynamic images, etc. The PIC’s 3D CAD has been widely employed by North Korean and foreign architectural design companies and more sophisticated versions of it are coming out. What’s more, the PIC is ramping up its joint R&D efforts with overseas IT developers with a focus on the development of diverse image processing programs. Korean-language information processing and systems are about developing the technologies for character recognition, voice recognition, natural language processing and primary retrieval while the development of network management systems includes fire walls, security solutions, encryption, e-commerce, IC cards, instant messenger programs, mobile game programs, etc. They are also working on the development of multimedia and dynamic images: technologies for producing 3D materials, 2D cartoon production and the technology for adding accompaniments to images are being developed. The PIC’s font development team has developed 300 Korean fonts and a myriad of calligraphic styles for imported mobile phones and dot fonts for PDAs.

The PIC has thus far scaled up its IT exchanges with overseas information and technology companies as well as R&D institutions. A case in point is the North-South joint venture, HANA Program Center, which is located in Dandong-si in Liaoning, China and was jointly invested in May of 2001 by the PIC and North-South HANA Biz, a subsidiary of South Korea’s Dasan Network. Another showpiece of the PIC’s effort for joint R&D is the software development for fonts and Chinese character recognition in collaboration with Soltworks (an e-publishing software developer). On top of that, the PIC’s IT exchanges with overseas institutions have been on the rise.

As such, inter-Korean cooperation projects will serve as the driving force behind the PIC’s IT exchanges with South Korea. To that end, non-military sanctions imposed on Pyongyang should be eased, such as the Wassenaar Arrangement (a multilateral export control regime (MECR) with 40 participating states) should be eased to move US – North Korea relations forward and the US’s EAR (Export Administration Regulation) on the North should be scaled back. Above all, IT-initiated unification of the two Koreas should be preceded by pragmatic dialogues with the North and North Korea’s efforts for reaching out to other nations. As of now, the North needs to draw up a future blueprint to embark on phased cooperation with the S. Korean government and companies in a bid to open its doors to the international community.

UPDATE from a reader who has spent some time there:

[T]hey are an interesting institution that not everyone has a chance to see from the inside. What was interesting is that they really work on software for foreign markets (i.e. mobile software for well known international cell network providers). In addition to that they have an impressive library of books on all topics of software development which was up-to-date at the time I visited.

In contrast to the other institutions they immediately showed commercial accomplishments instead of where the leaders have walked. Employees have access to a gym too. A place out of place in Pyongyang. What I found interesting in the article is that the mentioned developments match some of those the KCC presents in their building. The PIC made much more an impression of a service unit for foreign customers than for the country itself. However, they are training hardware specialists for the infrastructure there.

Read the full story here:
North Korea’s IT Application Software Development Center – Pyongyang Information Centre (PIC)
IT Times
Choi Sung
12/6/2010

UPDATE: Martyn Williams writes in PC World (11/5/2010):

A new PDA (personal digital assistant) has hit stores in North Korea, according to a student who writes a blog from the secretive state.

The device, which doesn’t appear to carry any branding, has a color touchscreen display that occupies its entire front, according to photos published on the “Pyongyang Show and Tell” blog. The Russian-language blog is maintained by a Russian student who is studying in the country.

Installed software includes a Korean dictionary and translation dictionaries pairing Korean to and from Russian, English, Chinese and German, the blog report said. There are several basic utility programs and an electronic map of the country although the PDA does not feature GPS (global positioning system).

There is also no wireless networking so data transfer has to take place via a USB connection to a Windows or Linux computer. Data can also be transferred via MicroSD card, which is the same as used in domestic cell phones.

“Comparing it to modern things like, let’s say, the iPad, it’s nothing,” the blog’s author, who didn’t wish his name to be used, told IDG News Service via email. “It’s still good as a dictionary, except I don’t see any other advantages.”

It’s not the first PDA in North Korea.

In 2003 the country’s media said “Hana 21,” a PDA developed by the Samilpo Information Center, had been put on sale. The device included English-Korean and Korean-English dictionaries as its main function and also had several games and a basic word processor. Input was by pen and touchscreen.

According to published images of the Hana 21, the two devices are different.

At the time the Hana 21 was said to cost around 200 euros (US$182 at the exchange rate of the time).

The new PDA that hit stores recently costs around US$140.

“It’s still hard to buy for a Korean, but there are many people who keep their money for years and can afford it,” the student said via email.

PDAs have long been out of fashion in many countries after their features and functions were duplicated by smartphones. North Korea has a 3G cellular network, but most cell phones have only basic features.

ORIGINAL POST: Show and Tell Pyongyang introduced the world to the DPRK’s version of Linux: Red Star.  Now he has introduced us to the DPRK’s new Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

Here are pictures from the Russian web page:

According to the Russian-language web page (via Google Translate):

A few weeks ago in North Korea has started selling the first PDA. In all the computer shops you can see the advertising of the new items. [I] offer a small review of this device.

On sale are a few options. The difference between them – is the amount of internal memory and a built-in slot for the stylus. The most feature-rich [costs] $ 140 and has 8 gigs of internal memory and a slot for the stylus, so you do not accidentally lose it.

In addition, there is a slot for MicroSD memory cards – the same as in the local mobile phones.

The main function of which is worth noting (and more generally for which there is a fly sabzh), an electronic dictionary Samhyn (삼흥) with the Russian language. It is no secret that South Korea produced electronic translators, but, according to eyewitnesses, the Russian language is absent in them as fact. And in this case, Russian-Korean and Korean-Russian dictionaries most voluminous in the number of vocabulary words. Besides, there are English, Chinese and German. Also has a large Korean Wiki Grand Korean Dictionary.

So for me personally, the main value of the PDA – is an electronic dictionary, which can carry with them always and everywhere. And the rest is not so important.

So what else is there? There is a map of Korea’s system of teaching foreign languages (English, Chinese). By the way, about a month ago there was an opportunity to put maps on your mobile phone. Application free of charge and requires activation. Put it on a large computer center of the city. []

Device has access to TV, headphones and a USB-slot. Possible to connect devices to both Windows, and Linux (in this case, Red Star)

On the whole – everything is simple and works quite well. At the moment, the firmware needs some work, not all features fully implemented, but the Korean comrades promise to update and refine.

If anyone else has more information, please let me know.