Delegation to North Korea Urges More Access to Internet and Cellphones

Bill Richardson, the former New Mexico governor leading the delegation, said on Wednesday in an interview in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, that his nine-member group had also called on North Korea to put a moratorium on missile launchings and nuclear tests that have prompted United Nations sanctions. He said the group had also asked for “fair and humane treatment” for Kenneth Bae, a naturalized American citizen born in South Korea who was detained by the North in November and charged with unspecified “hostile acts.”

The delegation’s visit has been criticized for appearing to hijack United States diplomacy and bolster North Korea’s profile after its latest, widely condemned rocket launching less than a month ago. The State Department criticized the trip as unhelpful at a time when the United States is rallying support for action by the United Nations Security Council.

Mr. Schmidt is the highest-profile American business executive to visit North Korea since Kim Jong-un took power a year ago. A vocal proponent of Internet freedom and openness, he has not said publicly what he hopes to get out of the visit. On Wednesday, he toured the frigid quarters of the brick building in central Pyongyang that is the heart of North Korea’s computer industry. He asked questions about North Korea’s new tablet computers as well as its Red Star operating system, and he briefly donned a pair of 3-D goggles during a tour of the Korea Computer Center.

Mr. Richardson, who has described the delegation as a private humanitarian mission, said that the members were bringing a message that more openness would benefit North Korea. Most in the country have never logged onto the Internet, and the authoritarian government strictly limits access to the Web.

North Korea has exercised strict control over its population of 24 million since it was founded by Kim Il-sung in 1948, including tight rules on the flow of information and close monitoring of the people’s interaction with the outside world.

But as the North’s tiny economy has languished in its isolation, the government has sought in recent years to turn its economy around by carefully and cautiously reaching out to foreign nations — primarily neighboring China and Southeast Asian allies — for help.

Mr. Kim, has made improving the economy a focal point of national policy for 2013, and has urged the people to expand their knowledge of science and technology to reach that goal.

Across the snowy capital, new propaganda signs and slogans reiterate those goals, exhorting the people to “break through the cutting edge” and “push back the frontiers” of science and technology in the spirit of the recent missile launching. On Dec. 12, the North shot a satellite into space on a long-range rocket, a move celebrated in Pyongyang but condemned by Washington and others as a banned test of missile technology.

In the North, the number of cellphone users has surpassed 1.5 million in a few years. The Egyptian telecommunications giant Orascom provides a 3G service.

But while global broadband Internet is available in North Korea, few have permission to access it. Those with computers and Internet access typically are restricted to a domestic intranet site that filters the information and publications available to North Koreans.

On Tuesday, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Richardson and other delegation members chatted with students who have permission to access the global Internet for research at the elite Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang.

On Wednesday, the group toured the main library in Pyongyang, the Grand People’s Study House, where locals still in their winter coats were crowded into drafty, unheated halls at computers with intranet access to the library’s archive of books, documents and newspapers.

Later, the delegation visited the multistory Korea Computer Center, the hub of North Korea’s software and computer product development, where a quote from the current leader’s father and predecessor as leader, Kim Jong-il, reads: “Now is the era for science and technology. It is the era of computers.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/world/asia/delegation-to-north-korea-urges-more-access-to-internet-and-cellphones.html?partner=rss&emc=rss