The Verge - Eric Schmidt goes to North Korea: the full story

North Korea to switch on 3G internet access for foreigners within a week

2013-02-22T05:00:43Z

A month after North Korea started allowing foreign tourists to use cellphones within its borders, the country has given the go-ahead to a move with far broader implications: for the first time, it will enable access to the internet via mobile data. The 3G network won't be available to ordinary North Korean citizens, but the AP reports carrier Koryolink informed foreign residents that the service will be offered no later than March 1st.

Following his recent visit to the country, Google chairman Eric Schmidt noted that it would be "very easy" for North Korea to offer mobile internet access to its citizens. It's unclear what restrictions will be placed on the service, and the country is unlikely to grant North Koreans wide access to the...

Google publishing more detailed North Korea maps with crowdsourced data

2013-01-29T02:34:32Z

North Korea has always been one of the few blind spots in Google Maps' efforts to detail the world, but the situation is set to get a little better. Google has announced that it will be leveraging input from users of its Map Maker software to publish more comprehensive maps of the secretive state. The update hasn't been pushed live yet, but a released image shows roads and other cartographical information added to the area around the capital of Pyongyang, which currently appears as a blank geographical expanse.

Of course, as Google chairman Eric Schmidt made clear during his recent trip to the country, the vast majority of North Korean citizens won't be able to access these maps themselves, with internet access restricted to all but an...

North Korea now letting tourists use cellphones for international calls

2013-01-21T06:28:42Z

North Korea doesn't allow many visitors inside its secretive borders, and those that can enter have been made to hand over their cellphones — until now. A technician with Koryolink, the country's only 3G mobile carrier, told Xinhua that tourists are now able to make international calls with WCDMA phones if they buy a €50 ($67) SIM card and register their handset's IMEI number at North Korean customs. Additionally, the Associated Press reports that Koryolink is operating a rental booth at Pyongyang airport. However, there's a catch: the SIM cards won't offer mobile internet access, and can't make local calls.

Eric Schmidt's daughter reports on creepy North Korea trip, says the country is like 'The Truman Show'

2013-01-20T21:46:23Z

After returning from a private mission to North Korea, Eric Schmidt says he sternly warned North Korean officials that their country risks falling further behind economically without a connection to the global internet, but didn't elaborate much further on the trip. Schmidt's daughter Sophie was also with the delegation, and in a lengthy Google Sites post titled "It might not get weirder than this," she describes a trip full of "highly staged encounters, tightly-orchestrated viewings and what seemed like genuine human moments." Sophie Schmidt writes that the North Koreans are "hostages in their own country, without any real consciousness of it," and says the best description the delegation could come up with is that "it's like The Truman...

Eric Schmidt's trip helped 'make the case for the virtues of the internet' in North Korea

2013-01-14T00:34:08Z

When Eric Schmidt announced his plans to go to North Korea, we were a little confused. Google's current chairman and former CEO is a fervent proponent of a free and open internet, while North Korea is famously one of the world's least-connected countries. After the trip's conclusion, The New Yorker's Evan Osnos sat down with John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University in South Korea and a member of Schmidt's delegation to North Korea, to talk about what Schmidt and his compatriots saw and did. Delury describes a slowly modernizing North Korea, a nation aware that its self-created isolation is causing problems:

Kim Jong-un is putting a major stress on economic development and on building a "knowledge-based economy." North Koreans I...

Eric Schmidt says North Korea must allow internet access or 'remain behind'

2013-01-10T13:55:13Z

Eric Schmidt has continued pushing for internet access in North Korea during his trip to the region, where many citizens are restricted to a tightly controlled domestic intranet service, Bloomberg reports. "As the world becomes increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world," Schmidt told reporters after visiting the North Korean capital. "The government has to do something — they have to make it possible for people to use the internet, which the government in North Korea has not yet done. It is time now for them to start, or they will remain behind."

Schmidt continued on to say that North Korea's most popular cellphone network — which has about one million phones...

Eric Schmidt and Bill Richardson pushing for more cellphone and internet access in North Korea

2013-01-09T15:15:04Z

Google's Eric Schmidt, former governor Bill Richardson, and the other members of a humanitarian trip to North Korea are pushing a message of online freedom, at least within the strict confines of the current regime. According to the Associated Press, Richardson says his group has given a message to "a variety of foreign policy officials, scientists," and government officials: "The citizens of the DPRK [North Korea] will be better off with more cellphones and an active internet." North Korea has relaxed its hold on technology slightly in recent years, leading to a jump in cellphone ownership and even a domestic Android tablet, but internet access is very strictly controlled (most of North Korea's few computer users can only access a...

Eric Schmidt visits a college computer lab during his first day in North Korea

2013-01-08T18:46:48Z

The Associated Press today released new photos and video of Google chairman Eric Schmidt's controversial trip to North Korea. Schmidt, who arrived in Pyongyang yesterday with former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, spent his first day visiting a computer lab at Kim Il Sung University, where students were busily surfing the internet from HP desktops. North Korea has one of the most restrictive internet policies in the world, but librarians at the Pyongyang-based university say students there have had access to the web ever since the lab opened in April 2010. Most students, however, are instructed to use the internet for educational purposes only, and the government continues to closely monitor online activity.

"A productive, but...