Fergie's Tech Blog

North Korea Ranked 'Worst Internet Black Hole'

A New York Times article by Tom Zeller, Jr., via The International Herald Tribune, reports that:

The tragically backward, sometimes absurdist hallmarks of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea and in particular its leader, Kim Jong Il, are well known. There's Kim's Elton John eyeglasses and cotton-candy hairdo, for instance.

A newer, more dangerous sort of North Korean eccentricity registered around 4.0 on the Richter scale earlier this month - a nuclear weapon test broadcast on state-controlled television.

But the stark realities of life in North Korea were perhaps most evident in a simple satellite image over the shoulder of the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, during a briefing Oct. 11. The image showed the two Koreas, North and South, photographed at night.

The South was illuminated from coast to coast, suggesting that not just lights, but the other, arguably more bedrock utility of the modern age - information - was pulsating through the population.

The North was black.

posted by Fergie @ 10/22/2006 03:08:00 PM