41 thoughts on “At last—views from North Korea!”

  2. If I had to guess what gives…I’d suggest that those’re some of of the poorest, most war-torn, most ravaged parts of the globe…they’re too busy worried about simple survival to give much thought to biology….

    b&

  4. ummmmm….it’s likely that whoever viewed your page has now been sentenced to hard labour at some prison camp.

  5. Congratulations. I don’t expect to ever get views from North Korea. I barely get any views from China, and still haven’t gotten most of Africa.

    Maybe I’m being overly optimistic but maybe this is a good omen for North Korea.

  6. Congratulations Jerry!

    My best guess is one of your readers is using the ONE IP address allocated to Pyongyang University of Science and Technology [PUST]

    Imagine that ~ a university with only one IP address!
    Perhaps you should ship the school of AFL a hardback copy of your two books for the library?

    It’s a strange place. Wikipedia claims that PUST is NK’s first privately funded university & the initiative is largely funded by Evangelical Christian movements ~ strange

    According to the same Wiki the goal of PUST is to contribute to North Korean economic development by producing professionals and leaders in various technical disciplines, who are fluent in both English as well as another foreign language (such as Chinese or German), and who are accustomed to working in an international setting [hence the IP address I suppose]

    NK are no doubt aware that they are taking a beating in world markets ~ Eric “Do No Evil” LOLZ Schmidt, the ex-CEO of Google, went to NK recently to talk to the tyrants about opening Internet channels. I assume something will happen & it will be a slimy deal as per Google in China.

    One astounding factoid I got off the CIA website ~ NK doesn’t have an internal phone directory available to users. If you want to phone anybody [in the unlikely event that you both have access to a phone] you just have to know the number.

      1. Maybe there’s only one road in-and-out too. With one email address and one phone number, it should be easy to keep the place free of contaminating influences.

    3. Some more background on PUST and its founder in this 2009 article.

      PUST gets mentioned in a book I’m reading at the moment, “The Impossible State” by Victor Cha. It seems that only a handful of select students get to surf the internet there, under strict supervision, with the purpose of acquiring useful information for the regime. I don’t think they were looking for cat videos…

      It seems that while a few thousand North Koreans in all have access to the sealed, internal North Korean “intranet”, only very few people other than the aforementioned students can access the wider internet.

      1. Interesting. I checked the book, but decided that others would be less annoying. I didn’t realize there were so many books about NK. I’m considering a Kindle edition of “Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty.”

        Jerry is probably already in trouble with Jong-un just because of this post and its free-wheeling comments. I hope he doesn’t threaten us with war unless Jerry apologizes. Ha, Jong-un seems to have used the Boston bombing to make a face-saving exit from all his threats. We should be done with the yearly joint military exercises with SK by now–or soon. Maybe he’ll declare victory for shutting them down and then shut up for awhile. He’ll be considered a superhero for facing down the Americans.

  8. QUESTION for JAC re map

    It it a per capita colour coding or raw number of views without reference to population size?

    1. Sure looks like raw views to me. What kind of per-capita normalization would have 4.8 million as the high end?

      2. Per capita would be interesting

        I would expect the Scandi nations, UK, NW Europe, Canada & maybe Japan to turn red with USA dropping to orange

        If JAC has the raw views-per-country & emails them to me I’d be very happy to re-colour the map & rescale the colour bar accordingly…

        1. Below, I suggested hits per 100,000 or hits per million as possible convenient metrics. The metric should give easy to read smallish numbers.

  10. Has Kim Jong-un got access to the internet?

    I suspect he has a weakness for cowboy boots.

  11. To whom it may concern in North Korea,

    I wish the people well, but I really think you need a change of leadership: Jong-un is just not working out well at all. In truth, neither did his father and grandfather.

    Invite South Korea to administer the country until reunification can take place. South Korea went through a difficult time after WWII but has turned itself into an A-list country and, in time, can do the same for you. With South Korea helping you free up your economy, you’ll see striking improvement in less than a year. Allow freedom of speech right away too; not having to be afraid to think is a wonderful thing. You’ll also need it; you’ll need to chat about problems, remaining structural nonsense, and misallocation of funds. Learn that one or just a few individuals can start some big things.

    Hopeful for your future,

    Mel

    1. I like your optimism! Yes, a better future for North Koreans is something we should all hope for. But as long as China supports it, the Kim regime may be here to stay, at least for the near future. Ordinary North Koreans are to busy trying to survive to think about a change in government, I fear.

      As for reunification, does anyone know how South Koreans feel about it these days? It would be quite a financial burden for South Korea if nothing else. In comparison German reunification was a piece of cake, the former East Germany was far more developed and richer than NK is.

      1. As I recall, SK is quite aware of the problems that Germany had and doesn’t want to repeat them. I can’t remember for sure, but I think West Germany wasted tons of money trying to give the East Germans the good life right away. I don’t think SK should do that. However, SK might have to deal with unreasonable expectations of the NK people. Let’s face it; most of them have been both starved and idiotized by a totalitarian regime. They’ve been told, for example, that they are better off than the South Koreans! This is why the NK gov talks of “tribute” from other countries rather than “aid.” Russia and China should be hit up for some emergency aid; they–as totalitarian regimes–caused the mess in the first place.

        There’s a Wikipedia article titled “German reunification” in which it says

        Second, East Germany’s economy and infrastructure underwent a swift and near-total collapse. While East Germany had long been reckoned as having the most robust economy in the Soviet bloc, the removal of Communist discipline revealed the ramshackle foundations of that system.

        I.e., the thing was a bigger f’ing mess than anyone realized. Considering the lack of intellectual freedom in East Germany, that should not have been a big surprise and I’d be seriously concerned that one would find the same surprise–or worse–when the lid comes off NK. This is one reason why it’s important to get a free press going immediately–the crap has to come to the surface.

        Reunification should be the end goal and not something to do immediately. I don’t think the North Koreans should be allowed to vote in SK elections immediately or cross the border immediately or to have access to SK welfare programs. Economic reform will have to come in steps. The misallocation of scarce funds must be staggering indeed, and you can count on every unproductive enterprise to resist change like hell. NK will need some stable economic policies in order to pull in investment money from all over the world. I doubt anybody in NK has much money so it’ll have to come from outside. (I think this might actually be a good deal for modern Chinese companies as well as SK companies.)

        As I remember from the liberation of Eastern Europe, even where there were food shortages, as soon as people were allowed to produce, food seemed to appear on the market from out of nowhere. That’s why I think the sharp edge of misery can be removed rather quickly.

        You’re right, the average NK guy can’t do it. As I mention in another comment below, it will require those who have remained independent thinkers to start the ball rolling and I see no way it could fail to include some very high ranking military officers. Somebody would have to keep that million-man military sitting on their butts (or better, doing something useful) while SK takes over the country. I’m out of my depth here so I’ll just quit.

        Difficult as it surely would be, something along these lines would be much much better than a war that could seriously hurt SK and get a lot of American soldiers killed–I’m talkin’ A LOT.

  12. How about using hits per 100,000 population or hits per million? …whatever metric gives some nice, easy to read numbers.

  13. Well, since North Korea is officially an atheist country, I expect evolution and WEIT wouldn’t conflict with their official beliefs?

    1. I saw a 2001 documentary recently where “heaven” was used in some official bull, so I’m confused about just how atheist they really are. Here’s the religion entry for NK at Wikipedia:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_korea#Religion

      According to Human Rights Watch, free religious activities no longer exist in North Korea, as the government sponsors religious groups only to create an illusion of religious freedom.

      As was obvious in the documentary, NK spends lots of money on creating illusions: lavish memorials and hotels with few (very few) guests, i.e., misallocation of scarce funds.

      Even if they didn’t mind his atheism, Jerry’s free mind would be a pest to them.

      1. Oh, agreed, I was just making the point that WEIT isn’t prima facie in conflict with North Korean policy (especially if one avoids the comments sections 😉 It would clash far more rapidly and obviously in an Islamic country, for instance.

        1. Ok, ok. Maybe Jerry could create a Korean language version too–with Korean comments. Oops, I guess not; that would allow SK comments which would not be wanted. Really, I don’t expect much from a regime that pre-tunes radios to gov frequencies and sends minders around to make sure people haven’t tinkered with the setting.

          I feel so lucky to have had someone like Jefferson as a founder of the U.S. rather than the elder Kim with a lot of help from Stalin. After 237 years, the Kims and the Muslims of this world still don’t get it.

          As to heaven in NK, the documentary mentions–right in the beginning–a story told to the NK people about the death of grandpa Kim: some birds came to take him to heaven, but the people rose up and insisted that he remain on Earth–hence the elaborate memorial museum with his body in it. Here is a link to this fascinating YouTube documentary. It appeared at Atheist Media Blog recently and it’s called “Welcome to North Korea.” Needless to say, they didn’t get out to where people are starving to death or suffering in labor camps.

  14. It’s Hitchens from beyond the grave, trying to keep in touch; thrown down into hell by William Lane Craig, gloating, Tertullian-like, at his eternal damnation.

    Or it could be Kim himself taking a delusional punt at what the biologists could do for him in germ warfare, now that he has some physicists on board with the WMD rocket-heads.

    1. If God wrote the Bible, it’s obvious that Hitchens is a lot smarter and could talk his way out of Hell.

  15. Baby Kim must have internet access – for a long time he was polling near the top for TIME’s Person of the Year.

  17. I’m hoping there are some military officers that actually care about the NK people and that will step up and do something about Baby Kim. Even in the worst totalitarian regimes, the gov can’t kill independent thought completely; some will see through the propaganda lies and know full well that the the NK system is a complete and total failure. On top of this, Jong-un could take NK into a destructive war with SK, the only country that can save them.

  19. I wonder if your post about North Korea elicited the view by some flunkey whose job it is to monitor the internet on behalf of the regime, just to keep up on world opinion/commentary about the DPRK.

    An alternative explanation would be an interest in duck genitals by someone in North Korea with open internet access (as certain privileged persons do indeed have).

    Either way, congrats!

  21. It’s nice to see New Zealand punching above its weight in hits for 4.4m population,but crikey check out Oz!

  22. “Chad, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan—all contiguous. What gives?”

    Perhaps their internet access comes in such a way that they appear to be in another country?

    South Sudan, in particular, given the recent separation – if anyone there is surfing the web, perhaps they show up as being from Sudan.

    In fact, a cursory search suggests that South Sudan may not have any IP blocks assigned to it. I did find one mobile provider that serves both Sudan and South Sudan. On their page you can select the service area, and both countries are listed (among others). If you select Sudan, you go to a Sudan-oriented site. Selecting South Sudan goes back to the main site where you started.

    Chad apparently only has 4096 Chad-specific IP addresses available to it. One site estimated 60,000 internet users, and under 100 livejournal pages by Chadian people. (Odd statistic, but there you go.)

    The same site estimates 13,000 internet users in CAR, and 37 livejournal sites.

    (http://www.nationmaster.com/country/ct-central-african-republic/int-internet)

    The same site says there are 42 North Korean livejournal sites, so who knows if they’re reliable on that score. The only DPRK live journal page I found was some kind of LARPer roleplaying as a North Korean in the context of some fiction universe blah blah blah.

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