Are Egypt-inspired upheavals possible in N. Korea?

SEOUL, Feb. 25 (Yonhap) -- Information and images of revolutions have been posted
on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in addition to being streamed live online by
activists in Tunisia and Egypt, inspiring millions of others in neighboring
Libya, Bahrain, Iran and even in China and Zimbabwe to campaign for radical
change.
Could the Internet mobilize North Korea's 24 million people to ride the Jasmine
wave and rise in an upheaval against their brutal regime led by the omnipotent
Kim Jong-il?
Officials, experts and watchdogs say no, because the North remains virtually
offline as one of the world's worst Internet black holes, diminishing the chances
of its starving citizens to even know about the pro-democracy protests in the
Middle East and beyond.
North Korean state media have been mum on the events in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya,
and have instead been stepping up rhetoric warning of the influence from Western
ideas and cultures.
It is uncertain whether any news of the protests has indeed made its way into the
North, but even in assuming that Pyongyang's elite have learned of the
snowballing Mideast crisis, its influence on the isolated North will remain
"insignificant" for now, South Korean Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said
Monday in an interview with Yonhap News Agency.
"I believe the North Korean people have yet to learn of the facts (about the
Middle East upheavals) because the North's television does not report on them and
the people can't use the Internet," Hyun said. "For now, the direct impact on the
people will not be big."
Middle Eastern dictators have detained and killed people for their anti-regime
activities online, blocked critical Web sites and employed highly effective smart
censors to cut off access to designated search terms, but the general public
enjoyed access to laptops, mobile phones and smartphones powered by 3G networks
and broadband networks connecting them to the World Wide Web where they could
interact, express and discuss non-regime related opinions and thought.
In North Korea, such levels of access and infrastructure for the masses are
unheard of.
The Internet there does not have access to the Web, and the country instead has a
tightly controlled, domestic intranet system, which allows users to only consume
content instead of freely generating and uploading their own to communicate and
express opinions, social scientists Cheng Chen, Kyungmin Ko and Lee Ji-yong wrote
in academic journal Pacific Review's December 2010 issue.
Built in 2002, the domestic intranet services several "Web sites," includes
e-mail, e-commerce and chat rooms, but even access to these services is
restricted to "no more than a few thousand people in Pyongyang," the social
scientists estimated.
Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, differed in his
estimation, saying that the number of Internet users is in the low hundreds, as
North Korea had about 100 IP addresses.
At a forum hosted by the Broadcasting Board of Governors in Washington last week,
Lankov said the World Wide Web is accessible in the North only "by a few major
international hotels, foreign embassies and foreign economic officials."
The North has its own mobile network, Koryolink, launched in 2008 with heavy
investments by Cairo-based Orascom Telecom, and recently boasted a rapid increase
in mobile phone service subscriptions and a wider third-generation network
coverage that reaches 75 percent of the population.
Orascom said in November that the total number of Koryolink subscribers was over
300,000 at the end of the third quarter last year, boasting a 400 percent
increase over a 12-month period.
A day ahead of the historic Jan. 25 pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt, the
North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that Orascom CEO and Egyptian
billionaire Naguib Sawiris met with leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang to mark
Orascom's investment making successful progress in different fields, including
telecommunications.
Though mobile phones are available in North Korea, their use is restricted to a
few elite in major cities, according to experts in Seoul. The phones do not allow
international calls or work with special telephone networks that foreigners are
normally permitted to use inside North Korea.
On Monday, Japan's Kyodo news agency said North Korea has suspended mobile phone
rentals for visitors from abroad, possibly out of fear that a free flow of
information may spark movement similar to protests sweeping the Middle East.
Spokesman So Hyun-min of Open Radio for North Korea, a radio station specializing
in North Korean news, said the North Korean regime's existing infrastructure and
media outlets cannot serve as conduits for an upheaval.
"The North Korean state media, the only official media outlet in the regime,
heavily censors and advertises only what they see as fit for their propaganda
purposes," he said.
The North's border with China with its black market and smuggling activities
serves as the only source of a "free" exchange of goods and information, So said.
About 5,000 border-area residents use smuggled Chinese mobile phones by hijacking
network signals to contact South Koreans, and while Open Radio for North Korea
does not work with any 3G network smartphone user there, So assumes that 3G users
there will soon rapidly increase.
"If open Internet access is available through 3G and more residents are able to
communicate live with the outside world via Facebook or Twitter and uncensored
e-mail, then maybe an upheaval is possible," So said.
"Until then, from what we can grasp from our sources in North Korea, it takes
three days for 1 percent, one week for 10 percent and one month for 30 percent of
the entire population to know about outside news," he added.
The North may be far and isolated from the Middle East, but it cannot be
completely cut off from news about its neighbor and biggest ally China, said Kim
Heung-kwang, a computer scientist who defected from North Korea in 2006 and now
heads a Seoul-based group called North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity.
"It is easy for North Korea to block news about popular revolutions in (faraway)
Africa or the Middle East, but if there were to be mass pro-democracy protests in
Chinese provinces bordering on North Korea, spread of such news is inevitable,"
Kim said in an interview with Yonhap on Wednesday.
"There is a constant flow of cross-border movement by Chinese tourists,
relatives, exchange students from Beijing, government officials and merchants.
There is no way for North Korean authorities to block every single piece of news
from being spread by word of mouth," he added.
Kim said North Koreans see China as their communist model that offers a better
life and freedom, and news of a Chinese popular revolt will be a serious shock
and have a tremendous amount of influence on the North.
There was a failed attempt at a Chinese "Jasmine Revolution" on Sunday in Beijing
and Shanghai, where the small smatterings of protesters were quickly outnumbered
by the vast forces of police.
A new call for Jasmine protests began circulating as an anonymous online
statement, claiming to be from the organizers of Sunday's failed attempt, urged
people to gather at designated sites every Sunday afternoon.
Reflecting on his time in Pyongyang as a Soviet exchange student decades ago,
Lankov said North Koreans want "most news and knowledge about the outside world
and not about their regime's corruption."
"They are just completely cut off from the outside world. They have their local
system, which is in no way physically connected to the Internet," Lankov added.
Open Radio for North Korea's So said a recent survey of defectors showed
otherwise, with North Koreans ironically being most hungry for accurate news
about their country and its regime.
Whichever is true, what is clear is North Koreans are eager to be connected to
the outside world.
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