by STEVE HAN
North Korea has banned foreign tourists from using wireless Internet access, according to reports from China, presumably in an effort to further clamp down on its citizens from gaining access to information technology in a country that enforces rigid censorship.
The North Korean government notified “nearly all foreign embassies, international organizations and other foreigners working in the country that wireless Internet access will no longer be granted to foreign tourists, China’s Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday. Moreover, authorities ordered to dismantle Wi-Fi installments before Sept. 11, according to the report.
Although average North Korean citizens cannot freely access the Internet, foreigners visiting the country on tourist visas until recently have had relatively free access to social media, including Twitter and Facebook on the Wi-Fi network operated by the state-run mobile company Koryolink. The tech firm is a joint venture with Egypt’s Orascom Telecom and has about 2.5 million subscribers.
In recent years, an increasing number of North Koreans in Pyongyang reportedly began moving to homes near foreign embassies to gain an illicit access to the Wi-Fi systems to bypass the tightly controlled flow of information in the country.
North Korea “warned that those who violate the regulation would be severely fined if the wireless connection signal is detected in the examinations, but no explanations or reasons were given by the officials,” Xinhua reported.
Photo via Phys.org
