I’ve known for some time that North Korea aka DPRK(Democractic People’s Republic of Korea) had a basic yet wildly entertaining newswire online at WWW.KCCP.net, but after visiting the site again today after a long absence I was pleased to see that they now have much more to offer. According to an undated but presumably recent press release, “The Korea Computer Centre (KCC), the nations software hub and local network centre, launched home page Naenara from June Juche 93 (2004).” Juche, incidentally is the name of North Korea’s official state philosophy of self-reliance, propagated by the now-dead but still legally head-of state Kim Il Song and now continued by his gluttonous son Kim Jong Il. Similarly to the way that the year in official dates in Japan is based on the reign of the current emperor (2004 is Heisei year 16, meaning the 16th year of the current emperor), Juche is used as the year label in the DPRK, which Juche year 1 being the year of Kim Il Song’s birth. Back to the main topic; North Korea’s new web presence.
According to their FAQ:
What is WWW.KCCKP.NET?
WWW.KCCKP.NET is the biggest Internet site in DPRK that operates as a base of information communication.
It provides useful information concerning whole field of politics, economy and culture of DPRK. North-south relationship has opened up a new stage of development after the historical declaration of Jun.15 Joint Statement attracting the world attention to the Korea’s reunification. Multilateral international relationship including Korea-Russian, Korea-America and Korea-Japan relationship is the focus of the world people’s attention. The reality requires that the world people have a quicker and correct understanding of Korea in order to strengthen the solidarity.
What kind of information is available?
The visitors to our site can gather deep and wide information about Korea. First of all it is possible to know the clear and consistent point of view of DPRK on the current international problems. And it will be helpful for you to know the real situation of Korea.
Membership and information service
Do I need to gain membership? Of course you may not have a membership. You can browse many information without membership. But it is recommended that you gain a membership in order to enjoy advantage in using our website.
What additional information service is available? You’ll have your own mail account and make a full use of convenient “Naenara” web mail service. Users can be provided with news and information in concern through “Naenara” e-mail.
How is the user information protected?
The security of user information is fully guaranteed. “Naenara” website regards it as its prime mission to protect privacy. Naenara website has built various security environment and is upgrading it continuously. It uses SSL. The 24-hour monitoring system is on alert to protect the site from hacking and viruses.
tive, but didn’t answer the one question I wanted to know: with a new free email service run according to Kim Jong Il’s interpretation of Stalin’s hard-line communist doctrine, do the capitalist imperialists of Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail have any chance of surviving? Obviously I had to try their email service and make my own assessment. The registration is fairly typical for a web site. I asked my girlfriend to look at the registration and compare the Korean and English versions. She said all of the questions are the same, but the Korean version is extraordinarily polite, actually using the Korean version of the Japanese word ‘sensei’ (which everyone should remember from Karate Kid.) They ask for your real name, a user ID and password with optional hint question, sex, birthday, citizenship and language. They also have optional fields for current email address, telephone numbers, occupation and ‘What do you think of our site?’ Now, it’s common for sites that have a password hint question to give you a list of predefined questions to choose from. Kcckp.net is no exception. The choices are: ‘The name of your best friend is…’ ‘The scenary I love most is…’ (type in original) ‘My favorite movie star is…’ “How would Korea change after reunification?’ ‘What will you do when Korea is reunified?’ ‘My favorite movie is…’ By allowing people to choose questions either based on the dream of a unified Korea or Kim Jong Il’s Hollywood film obsession, I think all users will be able to find one that will stick in their head well.
Under the language pulldown menu they have choices for English, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, French and Arabic which probably does a good job of covering over 95% of the people on this planet who have a computer, but the country field is a bit strange. First of all, the list of nations in the pulldown menu is in an order that I would have to describe as completely random if Korea were not the first entry, and will therefore have to describe as almost random, there are a couple of surprises in the list. Now, there is nothing strange about them listing only a single ‘Korea’ instead of ‘Republic of Korea’ and ‘Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,’ but I was completely astonished to see that Taiwan is a possible country of citizenship! How can little North Korea’s official government site contain such a slap in the face of the closest thing they have to a sympathetic ally? Luckily, even as a ‘US Imperialist,’ to quote from the news section of the site, I was allowed to register with no greater hassle than finding my countries name in a non-alphabetized list.
I was now the proud owner of the email address mutantfrog@kcckp.net! I opened my gmail account and fired off a quick message to my new kcckp.net account so I could see how their interface stacks up, but I ran into a bit of a brick wall when I discovered that the menu-bar item for ‘e-Mail’ does not in fact actually link to anything. After checking around a bit, I realized that the site was full of links which do nothing but open a Javascript application pop-up window with the message ‘Please Wait!’ Sadly, it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to use my North Korean communist email account today. I sent them an email, and although I have lost some confidence in their ability to compete with gmail, I can at least take comfort in the message on the contact information page, ‘You’ll be answered within 24 hours. Kind service will be waiting for you.
