August 13, 2013

A peek into North Korea’s gadget industry you never knew existed

by Sayan Chakravarty

In this age of hyper-connectivity, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) or simply North Korea has remained largely secretive. Thanks to the Nazi like rule in the country for years, what happens inside is largely unknown to the world. South Korea in the recent past has emerged as one of the leading technology giants which make us inquisitive; does the neighboring hermit country share the similar technology boom? Or is it still living in Stone Age. We finally got a peek behind the closely guarded walls and this is what we found.


North Korea’s first own Android smartphone
This is North Korea’s first smartphone which it has produced on its own. Named the ‘Arirang AS1201’, all we know is it runs on Android OS. Most of the features might not work as the country keeps switching the 3G services on and off from time to time. The design is also quite dated.

THE Samjiyon Tablet
Tablets aren’t quite novel anymore, we have tabs that cost even less than $35. North Korea has its own tab known as Samjiyon and going by the specs printed on the box seen in the picture, it isn’t that bad. But it doesn’t have WiFi and restricted to access North Korea’s broadcast stations.

The DPRK Laptop
We have laptops which have wafer thin displays and weigh almost nothing. Looking at the pictures, these laptops might look like the ones IBM made in the 90’s but surprisingly it was made in 2011 in DPRK.

The DPRK PDA
Some of the younger generation might not even know what a PDA is. They are definitely a thing of the past but North Korea still continues to use it, atleast three years back they did. At $160 and despite having no Bluetooth, Wifi, Camera or basically anything, it was one of the best tech gadget you could have bought in DPRK.

[Via – Stuff]