Digitally-Divided Korea

Another matter that this blog will continue to follow in 2011 is that of Korea's digital divides.   The most obvious and poignant of these, of course, is national division itself.  Because Korea was divided before the revolution in digital communications started to gather steam, the present digital divide between North and South Korea is unequalled in magnitude, scope or implications anywhere else in the world.
Western scholars and journalists have, unfortunately, been slow to recognize the extent and impact of the digital divide between North and South Korea.   I've recently been reading the important book by Pippa Norris entitled Digital Divide:  Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide.  (see portions here on Google books)  While her book makes note of Korea here and there, it utterly fails to even describe what South Korea had already accomplished by the year it was published, 2001.  Figure 3.2 in the paperback edition of the book is a bar graph depicting the "percentage of population online by nation" in 2000.  The very top bar, unfortunately, is not labeled, and the second bar represents Sweden, followed by Norway, Iceland and so forth.   I believe the top bar represents South Korea, because in 2000 its internet penetration was number one in the world, by some margin over the Scandinavian countries that caught it a few years later.
The pattern of attention to Korea needs to change, and a December 29 article in The Economist provides some evidence that this change may be starting.  Entitled "Parallel Economies," it compares the challenge of Korean reunification with that of German reunification.  As shown in the accompanying graphic (click to see a full-size version), the economic divide between the two nations has grown to alarming proportions.  If the Korea's reunified, the South Korean government would face a stark choice.  It could try to fill the gap in living standards between North and South through handouts, public investments and subsidies, or it could brace itself for heavy migration, as poor northerners moved to the South in search of higher wages.
Although The Economist focuses on the economics of the matter, what this blog finds interesting is the crucial role played by digital media in these matters.  After all, it is through the new media that residents in the northern half of Korea find out about the South and vice-versa.  
There is some evidence emerging that the government of North Korea has recognized the central role of information technology and digital media.  As reported by the North Korea Tech blog, the KCNA, North Korea's official news agency, has just launched video news.

President Lee: South Korean Reunification Drawing Near

President Lee Myung Bak, on a tour of Southeast Asian nations, has stated that although "North Korea now remains one of the most belligerent nations in the World... it is a fact that the two Koreas will have to coexist peacefully and in the end realize reunification."  As reported by the Washington Post, and widely in the international press, Lee made the comments on two different occasions.   In a speech on Thursday night, Lee said that North Koreans have become increasingly aware that the South is better off. He did not elaborate on how their knowledge had expanded, but he said it was "an important change that no one can stop."
Although President Lee did not elaborate on how and why North Korean's knowledge of the South is increasing, readers of this blog will know from earlier posts that the information revolution and the availability of ever-smaller and more powerful digital devices (cameras, DVD players, smart phones.....) is at the heart of the matter.
In August, President Lee said South Korea should prepare for reunification by studying the possibility of adopting a reunification tax aimed at raising money for the costs of integration. Lee proposed a three-stage reunification process in which the two Koreas would first form a "peace community" involving denuclearization of the peninsula, then an "economic community" for cross-border economic integration, and eventually a "community of the Korean nation" with no institutional barriers between them.  In a recent interview, the President noted that "ultimately, the foundation for reunification will be laid when North Korea becomes economically independent."

The Impact of Information in North Korea: More Middle Class Defectors?

An article in the Chosun Ilbo today reports on speculation that more middle class people are beginning to defect from North Korea, following the utter failure of that nation's currency reform last year.  While the article does not present numbers or hard evidence, it would be surprising if this new trend is not the case.   In addition to the currency reform, the article notes that  the spread of South Korean pop culture through videos and CDs clandestinely circulated in the North has also encouraged some middle and higher-class North Koreans to flee.
The article simply underscores the critical role of communication and information in solving the overarching political problem in Korea:  national division.   This has been the subject of numerous earlier posts.  The following are some main considerations.

• The continued growth of  telecommunications infrastructure disparity between South and North Korea--the world's largest and most poignant "digital divide."
•  The current rapid expansion of mobile broadband (a.k.a. "smart phones" --Apple, Android and others) and other digital technology is making it more difficult for the North Korean government to keep information out.  It comes in via mobile phone, MP3 players, DVD and so forth.
• North Korea ultimately faces the same dilemma as China, with its "Great Firewall," ---either accept the internet and see your economy participate in global growth, or reject it and stagnate economically.
• Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in 1948 stated that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."    This was re-affirmed in the present century by the World Summit on the Information Society.   North Korean citizens are being denied this right.

Mobile Phone Communication with North Korea: Current Status

An article in today's Korea Times provides some very interesting specifics about how North Korean refugees in South Korea communicate with people in North Korea by mobile phone.  Seo, Jae-pyong, the Secretary-General of a group called North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity (NKIS) said that NKIS has run a news outlet service based on mobile phone conversations with secret correspondents in North Korea since 2008.  The purpose of this effort is to provide more information about the reclusive nation.  The NKIS provided the stringers with cell phones that have an international roaming service. International phone rates between South Korea and China are applied when North Koreans call NKIS people.  Although he declined to give information about how much the stringers are paid, the NKIS representative said that their allowances are high enough to feed their families.  He also said that "When we have conversations with people, especially from the border area between North Korea and China, we hear them as clearly as our phone conversations with our colleagues in South Korea."  Mr. Seo, an engineer, escaped from North Korea in 2001.  Out of approximately 20,000 North Korean refugees that have settled in South Korea from the 1990s, about 600 are college graduates.  About 300 of these educated people have joined NKIS to let people outside North Korea know more about it.
Seo also said that North Koreans can access the latest South Korean television dramas at home without much difficulty, despite the government's strict ban on the circulation of South Korean cultural products.   Two or three weeks after airing in the South, these dramas are copied onto CDs in China, and then these CDs are sold to distributors who deal with the North Koreans.

Communication and National Reunification

Professor Johan Galtung, one of the world's towering intellects, with whose work I became acquainted in graduate school, was in Korea recently for a guest lecture at Dong-A University in Pusan. Early in his scholarly career he thought about and published on the topic of the international flow of news. Therefore, what follows in this post should not be surprising, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he had come to Korea and addressed specifically the central political issue here. His guest lecture was entitled "Peace in the Global Era and Perspectives of the Unification on the Korean Peninsula" According to the author of the Left Flank blog, "Galtung quickly laid out his five-point lecture. He began with his distinction between negative and positive peace, and applied it the Korean peninsula. The goal of resolving the Korean armistice precedes political unification. After characterizing the North Korean state as "fundamentalist Confucian", Galtung then argued that unification only necessitated the free flow of people, goods and services, and information and ideas between the two Korean states, not the dissolution of ROK and DPRK into a single Korean state. Galtung buttressed this point by that of three other scenarios, conquest, collapse, or peaceful dissolution, the first two were violent, and the last has never occurred in human history. Galtung termed this "national reconciliation without the unification of two states". Galtung subsequently considered confederation as a starting political point, but unnecessary. " (My emphasis added.)

It is significant that Galtung mentions the free flow of five things: people, goods, services, information and ideas. One could hardly make a better argument that the communication and digital divide between North and South Korea are at the heart of national division today. Accordingly, the opening up of free communication is tantamount to national reunification. In fact, I would argue that if services include modern communications services, which in turn require modern fiber-optic and mobile networks, the five necessities Galtung mentions will result in Korean reunification. I would go further to speculate that fulfilling these necessities will be the beginning of the end of two states on the Korean peninsula. Anyone who has lived in Korea for more than a decade, as I have, will know that free flow of information on this peninsula, culturally speaking, leads directly and probably quickly (빨리빨리) to reunification.

North Korea's Moment for Mobile? Update

North Korea's plan to implement mobile telephone services is in the news again. According to Reuters, Orascom CEO Naguib Sawiris says that the service will "start in three major cities in the reclusive communist state and the company would then assess the impact." He said his company wants to see first how fast it will sell that and what kind of ARPUs (average revenue per user) can be generated. Sawiris said he was "astonished" how quickly the North Korean authorities wanted the service to start and he had high hopes for business in the country."We firmly believe that in the next three or four years we will be having a couple of million subscribers there and we will be seeing ARPUs in the range of $12 or $15 (a month)," he added. Given North Korea's recent record of attempting to control mobile communications, it will be interesting to follow Orascom's progress.

Hana Linux and Korean Reunification

The recent announcement coming out of a conference in China that North and South Korea would work together on Linux software has already generated a spate of hyperbolic commentary on the web. Training centers for Linux professionals will be developed at Yenben and Dandung in China, and at Pyongyang, Kaesong and Hoichun in North Korea, according to reports. To place this announcement in some sort of perspective, it is helpful to remember the following:

• Windows is still dominant in the South Korean market, despite some recent announcements. When the Ministry of Information and Communication announced in early 2006 that it would designate a "Linux City" and a "Linux University" only 1 percent of the nation's computers were running Linux (lower than the global median of 3 percent). Near the end of 2006 Kwangju was designated as an open-source city, in a project running from 2006-2010, which will bear watching.
• North Korea, despite having few connections to the internet and virtually no modern mobile telecommunication networks, reportedly has made some progress in software development. The government in the North may well view joint software development, including Linux, as a non-controversial way to start cooperation with colleagues from the South.
• Especially in the Korean context, announcement of a project and actual implementation can be two very different things.
• Will the jointly developed Linux be solely for the use of Koreans with only the Korean market in view, or will the developers envisage Korea's role in the global information economy?

South Korea has unquestionably made progress in the development of Linux, developing its own version called Buyeo, for use in Seoul schools. Also, the project to make Kwangju an open source city is underway. These developments all merit attention, as do joint South-North efforts on Linux. More to come on this topic.

Korea's DMZ as Digital Divide -- The Satellite Photos

The topic of Korea's digital divide obviously attracts interest. It is the single most widely read post on this new blog. A bit of research on the web indicates that the existence of iconic satellite photographs of the Korean peninsula at night have contributed to the interest. These have indeed been widely circulated on the internet and have received some attention in the business and mainstream press. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used such an image an October 11, 2006 news briefing following North Korea's nuclear test. The image used during his briefing shows not only the well-lit urban concentrations in South Korea, but also the bright lights of the squid-fishing boats off the east coast of the country.

There are many versions of the satellite photos and some of the most interesting are those provided by Google Earth. For example, a researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology has put together a world map of Earth Lights on Google Maps. You can also use an interesting overlay available within Google Earth to zoom in on the Korean peninsula at night. What all of these views have in common is that North Korea, with the exception of Pyongyang, is literally "in the dark." Not surprisingly, these images from space have come to symbolize the lack of modern communication networks in North Korea, compared with the south. A view of the Korean peninsula representing the density of either fiber optic networks or mobile telecommunications networks would approximate what the satellites now capture at night.