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Friday, 23 September 2016

North Korea’s top-level internet domain only has 28 websites

North Korea’s top-level internet domain only has 28 websites: Earlier this week, a North Korean tech administrator accidentally gave the world access to one of NK’s top-level internet domains, revealing that only 28 websites used the “.kp” domain name in question. By Wednesday, all the websites stopped functioning. The gaffe gave a rare glimpse into the few online sources of information available to the nation. The websites included those of the national airline, official bodies such as the maritime agency, and the state newspaper Rodong Sinmun, which included headlinessuch “Narcotic-related crimes increase among South Korean youngsters.” The “.kp” domain name also had its fair share of bizarre websites, including “friend.com.kp”, which appears to be some kind of social network, as well as “cooks.org.kp” for cooking recipes, and “korfil.com.kp” for a selection of North Korean movies. Only a few thousand North Korean citizens have access to the internet, while the rest of the country only has access to a closed national intranet called Kwangmyong, which was not revealed in the leak. The details of the domain name were uploaded to GitHub, and quickly made its way to Reddit, which capped the story thusly: “Bet NK has one less DNS administrator now.

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