Technology in North Korea
In early November 2018, I got the chance to visit North Korea as part of the Choson Exchange, a program which sends people with entrepreneurship experience to teach the basic of how to build a startup. It was a great way to visit the country, not only to connect with locals but also get to see a part of North Korea that most people don’t get access to. The thing I was the most interested in exploring was their technology. For this post, I will highlight some of the more memorable things I saw.
What this Article Covers
- Why did I go?
- Where did we teach?
- The University of Pyongsong AI Lab
- North Korean Technologie Books
- Technical Posters in the Grand People’s Study House
- A Visit to the Sci-Tech Complex in Pyongyang
- The North Korean Tablet
- Final Thoughts
Why Did I go?
Back in 2016, I started to develop a strong curiosity about what really happens in North Korea, with the majority of my interest coming from VICE documentaries. In 2017 I decided to find a way to visit the country and discovered that the best way of doing it was through the Choson Exchange, a non-profit group which brings people with entrepreneurship experience to go teach the basics of starting a business. This program is a great way to interact with locals and also gives you a chance to see parts of North Korea that many people don’t get to see. Most of the teachers in the program come from Asia and Europe. However, there was one other Canadian (Jordan Zipkin of Real Ventures) who decided to go as well.
When I signed up for the Choson Exchange I suggested that I could talk about low-cost prototyping for biotechnology, as my background (co-founder of NeuroTechX and District 3 and Core organizer of Biohacking Village) made me qualified to talk about it. Although I mostly limited my talk and demos to that subject, I figured it would be fun to bring some other “emerging tech” devices as well.
The device which seemed to get the most attention was the Smartphone VR demo I brought. Even though smartphones are relatively popular in the country (about 2 million people have them), the local phones don’t have the proper features to support it due to a lack of gyroscope. Google Cardboard could potentially be something of huge interest to the population once the new generation phones become available.
Where did we Teach?
During our stay, we were mentoring academics from the University of Pyongsong, found in the city of Pyongsong which is about 30 minutes away from the capital. Since we were there to mentor people, I was paired with those who belonged to the universities automation research group. The leader of them (who went by the name of Kim Chang Hyok) had already participated in the program 3 times to the Choson Exchange. His startup idea was to build components which would help to properly manage electricity use for manufacturing and mining companies.
Visiting The AI Research Lab in Pyongson
Since our group showed interest in learning more about the university we were teaching at, we got to visit different research institutes, including their electronics manufacturing lab and their Artificial Intelligence Lab. It’s interesting to note that the scale of projects worked on there is quite small compared to projects found in Canada. Even though Pyongsong is one of the top 10 universities in the country, they have limited resources. During our conversations with the researchers, I was surprised to learn that the Universities researchers get access to the outside internet. Unfortunately, they are only allowed to read online content and cannot post anything without proper approval.
There were two primary demos we were shown during the AI lab. The first one would do face identification. It would start by first capturing pictures of my face to build my profile. The camera would be able to identify my face compared to the others in the room.
The other demo we were shown was an interesting one. It would take my fingerprint data and try to determine if I would be good at Taekwondo. This demo seemed to be based on similar practices done in reflexology and did not necessarily have too much scientific basis behind it. The demos were powered directly from the local machines. From what we gathered, they don’t have the necessary infrastructure to do any AI solutions which require large computation systems. Therefore they have limitations in the type of research they can do.
North Korean Books about Technology
I was given a rare pleasure of being able to see some of the locally produced books around different subjects.
The AI Books
On my the third day in North Korea, Kim Chang Hyok, the leader of the students I was mentoring, brought two books for me to check out. The books were some of the first ones in North Korea to be written about Neural Networks and were written by his stepfather. As you can see, quite a few of the references come from books written by notable AI Experts in the US and Europe. Even the famous undergrad AI book - “Artificial Intelligence: a Modern Approach” was a reference.
Although my comprehension of Korean is non-existent there were plenty of graphs and figures in to help me understand what topics were being covered.
The Word Processing Book
Yes, North Korea has their own word processing software which come pre-installed in their operating system (It is based on Open Office apparently. You can see a couple of examples of it here ), I didn’t have a chance to take a picture in the inside however this book helps to teach people the basics of how it works. A video demo around it can be that talks about the OS and the word processor can be found here.
Other Books:
I was also able to find some interesting book on C and one that discusses the fundamentals of IT security.
Technical Posters in the Grand People’s Study House
When we visited the Grand people’s study house, the large library based in the capital of Pyongyang, the thing I found the most interesting (asides from its amazing view) was what was hanging on the walls. Throughout the library were posters that discussed a wide variety of different technologies. Some of the subjects presented included Hydrogen Cars, Quantum Computing, and Wearable Devices.
A Visit to the Sci-Tech Complex in Pyongyang.
One of the things I was looking forward to the most was visiting the Sci-Tech Complex. The center provides different services locals including access to the countries intranet and also provides access to different types of computer software. Although I can’t validate the source, apparently you can even get access to programming languages (Such as Python) and install them on personal laptops.
One of the services of the technology center is to provide resources for children to learn through its science museum. There was a wide variety of demo’s that explain different science and physic concepts.
The North Korean Tablet
One of the participants of the Choson Exchange Benoit Berthelier, purchased a North Korean tablet while on the trip. The primary method to get more apps for your phone is to go to a local store and download APK’s from the vendors laptop. Some of the translators showed us their phones and the apps they had installed (A lot of the apps are Chinese based. One of our translators had quite a few different versions of angry birds). The tablet has a variety of preinstalled apps on it including access to a large library of reading materials. Benoit was able to get one app installed on the tablet as seen in the video below.
Final Thoughts
Although they still are far behind the rest of the world in terms of available technologies, I was still quite surprised by what was there. It’s hard to say if the same level of access is universal across all of North Korea as we were only able to see two cities.
I doubt we will be seeing any groundbreaking technologies come out of the country for quite some time though due to sanctions. Most countries that are part of the UN do not permit sharing any form of technical data with the country due to the concern that it could be used as part of their nuclear program. This may unintentionally make it difficult to provide access to things which can help to improve the quality of life in the country (Although they could get access to it through their relations with China).
If you are interested in going to visit North Korea, I would recommend doing it through the Choson Exchange. They are a great group of people and are working really hard to help the development of an entrepreneurship economy in the country. They have multiple opportunities for you to get involved, so check out their website!
For more pictures and videos from my trip, check out my Flickr and this Youtube playlist
