The Internet is still young, and North Korea remains a hermit Kimdom. But that’s a losing wicket. The World Wide Web brooks no exceptions. Already it has utterly transformed both the quantity and quality of our information about the DPRK, as indeed about everything else.
To those of us who remember when knowledge only came printed on paper, the difference is staggering. What was the preserve of a handful of specialists, published in arcane tomes and obscure periodicals found in few libraries, is now available to just about anyone anywhere in the world – except North Korea, of course – at the mere click of a mouse. That is amazing.
The Internet is still young, and North Korea remains a hermit Kimdom. But that’s a losing wicket. The World Wide Web brooks no exceptions. Already it has utterly transformed both the quantity and quality of our information about the DPRK, as indeed about everything else.
To those of us who remember when knowledge only came printed on paper, the difference is staggering. What was the preserve of a handful of specialists, published in arcane tomes and obscure periodicals found in few libraries, is now available to just about anyone anywhere in the world – except North Korea, of course – at the mere click of a mouse. That is amazing.
Get the Daily Update
Start your day with the North Korea stories that matter most –
Aidan Foster-Carter is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology and Modern Korea at Leeds University in England. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he taught sociology at the Universities of Hull, Dar es Salaam and Leeds from 1971 to 1997. Having followed Korean affairs since 1968, since 1997 he has been a full-time analyst and consultant on Korea: writing, lecturing and broadcasting for academic, business and policy audiences in the UK and worldwide.