checkmate tankers
Actually, there are multiple local phone manufacturers in the DPRK, including Arirang, Jindallae, and Phurun Hanal. They've all produced several original designs, and several phones have even been manufactured domestically. There's also a decently substantial clone market, which sells clones of smartphones popular in the west. A clone Samsung Note 8 and a clone of one of the iPhones somewhere in the 6-8 generation with virtually identical design come to mind as devices I've seen commonly in the hands of common people in and outside Pyongyang.
Devices can connect to the national intranet network called Kwangmyong via wifi or 3g data. There is in fact free public wifi in Pyongyang, with the SSID name "Mirae" or "future" and there's a streaming service that lets you watch live tv, domestically produced films, read newspapers, and even watch pirated foreign films.
Some access to the internet can be achieved, but the majority of the network's users are connecting via dial-up or their very heavily used 3g network which hasn't been upgraded substantially since the early 2000s due to sanctions. While there are hopes of moving the whole country to fiber, and there are terrestrial interconnects to the greater internet via China and Russia already built and in use. The intranet does have access to some external internet content, but the low power of most computers and low speed of the network means that modern websites are far too heavy to load, so services like reading world news or doing internet searches are achieved by domestic systems that scrape the web and then translate it into plain text and simple html only.
Unironically this is a reason why I came around to appreciate the way marxists.org is designed. That site will load on a tomagotchi, and without pop ups or any other modern web nonsense
Yeah, websites that run on nothing are the best. The internet making everything be a rat race of more and more computing power needing to be thrown at rendering worse and less functional websites is awful
they probably just made that up to convince us enlightened redditors that it's not ebil like 1984. thankfully, it's not working. try your evil stalinist magic somewhere else.
I wanna go there now. I mean, I already did, so long as I can bring my banjo.
Actually posted more about TV stuff there, here ya go
Solid half of this is from spending time in the country myself, but there are several tech journalist websites that have done limited profiles on some of the physical phone units that are available, and I think even the feds now admit that there are in fact multiple land and satellite connections to the broader internet in use in the DPRK with enough traffic volume that the only way the narrative of only people at universities or upper officials in the party being able to access the internet does not hold up. People show up on the Steam network in the DPRK all the time these days too, just downloading a shitload of games or doing the steam DRM check-ins, and then going back offline so they can use the internet for other stuff while gaming.
MANBANG! That's the name of the netflix-y thing. It felt a lot more like using a plex library, it's a little dongle like a roku that hooks up to your TV and lets you watch your own content in the same way those little DVD/USB player laptops would, but on your TV. The little notebook viewer things are pretty common, I think mostly with older and more rural/poor households, tablets are surprisingly common in cities and with university people. I was told by a few people that Manbang being available on all tablets and phones was something that was being worked on, but I'm not sure if it has happened yet. I saw one person's tablet that was described as a "Korean iPad" that looked like an older android tablet with a really clunky keyboard accessory that looked almost like a children's toy, and that did have access.
It was a lot like a smart TV, it had VOD stuff, about 7 or 8 live streaming tv channels, news articles you could scroll through with your remote, movies made in country, western movies that looked very pirated (hardcoded subtitles and weirdly bad quality, like worse than a DVD but for modern western movies, I saw a marvel film that wasn't out yet on the list.) Watched a weird french-language sci fi animated film with robots that was made in the DPRK and a martial arts comedy movie, neither of which I remember too much because they were just on in the background while talking and doing other stuff.
Cable TV access is apparently common in cities, OTA broadcasting looked to still be 80s analog TV (which rules, my fave era of broadcast tech, so cool). I was told that all homes built since the 90s have to have access to cable and I'd believe it. North Korea loves TV! Most TVs are what westerners would consider small in terms of screen size, like 12-20 inches being common. That doesn't seem to bother people, they bring their TVs all around the house to watch in different rooms, and I even saw people dragging their TVs outside to watch in the fresh air.
Decent mix of CRTs and LCD tvs, most of those LCDs I saw in use being pretty early tech ones from the 2000s, but smart TVs are available in stores and I saw them in homes with access to Manbang and Karaoke apps, even some of the CRTs are shockingly modern, and I saw one with an HDMI port on the front where you'd expect RCA cables. Was absolutely shocked to see modern HDTV DVB digital broadcasts from Russia on a CRT television. Apparently CRTs are still manufactured new in the DPRK, idk if the tubes are new or just everything around them.
https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Going_NoPhone
Going nophone is a real thing in libre spaces. Of course I own a Google Pixel loaded with GrapheneOS so I'm redfash tankie
honestly it's getting harder every year but I'm closer to doing it anyway every year too lmao
I've come to resent the idea that I should always be available for anyone to reach me and that not replying promptly is some sort of slap in the face and totally unacceptable
rn I'm running a pinephone pro, and I'm basically down to phone calls (which I rarely get or answer) emails and signal messages, and I now set my phone down and don't look at it for hours at a a time way more than I used to, so even those are less prompt. sms to my personal number go via email so theres a lag to it and I'm kinda treating that as a feature not a bug. I'm comfortable getting around with no phone or dead phone way more than I used to be, as long as I have my transit pass and a watch I feel fairly secure
Yeah its a state capitalist, the US is crony capitalist and russia is homophobic capitalist. Im very left indeed but not a commie we just need to enter good capitalism where everyone is equal.
