Raise Your Weapons To Wave Our Supreme Commander!

[astro]

From Slate

North Korea gets webby with it!

Pyongyang may be building nuclear missiles, but it has yet to figure out how to launch a decent Web site. The home page for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is such a strikingly amateur piece of work that many who find it wonder if it isn’t some sort of hoax. Meant to convey the DPRK’s point of view to skeptical Westerners, the site’s pages instead attest to the difficulties of English as a second language: “The traditional Korean clothing is composed by the inferior clothing.” A huffy explanation for the country’s withdrawal last Friday from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty claims “the USA is creating an energetic crisis.” Whatever message the site intends to deliver is buried beneath clashing clip-art graphics and a navigation interface that should have usability guru Jakob Nielsen blogging for days.

[Derleth]

How do we know it isn’t a hoax?

[DreadCthulhu]

The above site has a * .com * top level domain, but don’t countries each get their own to level domain - .us for the United State, .jp for Japan, ect. You think the official government website would be on whatever North Korea’s top level domain is.

[astro]

Websites that offer an esperanto language link are heart attack serious. Deadly serious. Esperanto is not the international language of humor. It’s the language of steely eyed dictators seeking world domination.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

*Originally posted by DreadCthulhu *
**The above site has a * .com * top level domain, but don’t countries each get their own to level domain - .us for the United State, .jp for Japan, ect. You think the official government website would be on whatever North Korea’s top level domain is. **

I don’t think North Korea has a domain. Not enough computers in the whole country to justify it.

The fact is, any small-town teacher’s college probably has more computers than North Korea, better ones, too.

[Skelji]

On the Neighboring Interests page on the North Korean site, they have this to say about South Korea:

“All your military base are belong to us.”

[Bartman]

*Originally posted by Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor *
I don’t think North Korea has a domain. Not enough computers in the whole country to justify it.

Of course they have a domain. It’s .kp. Every UN recognized nation has a domain.

[Bubba_Ray]

I am not sure how the administration stands to post full whois queries, so I will just say the domain is registered to an Alejandro who seems to life in Spain and has a hotmail account in his contacts…

Someones whoshed and I fear its me…

[DeadlyAccurate]

Korea is one of biggest gaming countries in the world (PC games). And they run the biggest MMORPG in the world, too (Lineage: The Blood Pledge). In other words, Korea is no slouch in the PC department. Now, whether that only applies to South Korea or not, I don’t know.

[Sofa_King]

DeadlyAccurate, I’m pretty sure that applies only to South Korea.

North Korea appears to have some ideological problems with games:

The crux of the matter was that the young man of justice symbolized a capitalist society and the gang a Communist group. Looking at the program again after hearing the argument, the gangsters, to our astonishment, were red-faced and had horns on the head, as Communists are sometimes depicted in the South…

The game could be seen as representing North Korean youths becoming men of justice and crushing communists. We thought of the game program merely as a pastime without thinking deep. After the program became controversial, we could comprehend some reason behind the authorities’ argument. We were startled. Had someone really tried to make an issue out of it, we could have been subjected to self-criticism.

And lord help you if you have to be subjected to self-criticism, yo.

[DreadCthulhu]

I just did some domain searches on google with * .kp * and I couldn’t find anything- does North Korea have a webpages?

[El_Kabong]

While the extension .kp has been assigned for domains in the Democratic People’s Republic, it is not currently used for anything:

http://www.iana.org/root-whois/kp.htm

Doing a whois search through an international whois server for kcna.co.jp returns a nameserver listing of:

ns.isle-jp.net

doing a whois on isle-jp.net listing returns the following:

Registrant:
isle,inc (ISLE-JP2-DOM)
nisseikoujimachibldg 3F 3-3-6,kudanminami
Tokyo, 102-0074
JP

Domain Name: ISLE-JP.NET

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Isle, Inc (II35) domain@ISLE.NE.JP
Isle,Inc.
CERULEAN TOWER 10F 26-1 Sakuragaoka-cho
Shibuya
Tokyo
150-8512
JP
81-3-6415-6111 81-3-6415-6103

Record expires on 12-Nov-2004.
Record created on 11-Nov-1996.
Database last updated on 15-Jan-2003 08:48:26 EST.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS.ISLE-JP.NET 211.13.198.10
NS2.ISLE-JP.NET 210.166.240.4
So, the Korean News Agency is hosted on a commercial server in Japan (as stated on its home page), and this appears to be because no one in North Korea has ever taken whatever steps may be necessary to use the .kp top-level domain.

[El_Kabong]

Sorry, in case the above was a bit confusing, I did a whois search on the North Korean news agency, not the official site, but the fact remains that the .kp extension is not currently in use, hence the ‘official’ site being hosted on a .com domain.

[Bartman]

*Originally posted by El_Kabong *
Sorry, in case the above was a bit confusing, I did a whois search on the North Korean news agency, not the official site, but the fact remains that the .kp extension is not currently in use, hence the ‘official’ site being hosted on a .com domain.

It looks like you are correct. Apparently NK has never established the required governing body. And no domain names have ever been assigned. Thus although NK has a domain they have never used it.

[Mops]

The site seems to be put up by one “Korean Friendship association” - see http://www.korea-dpr.com/about.htm

This page was created by the Korean Friendship Association with the support and official recognition from the government authorities of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Remember the times in the mid-1990s when young members of organizations of all kinds put up unofficial and semi-official homepages because the old farts at the top could not be made to understand what a web site was? The site makes me feel nostalgic …

BTW their membership statistic is interesting. That the largest contingent are Chinese shouldn’t surprise, but look at the second place…

[Cervaise]

I really want the clock.

[sailor]

That site is put up by some guy in Catalonia, Spain, and is in no way an official site of the North Korean Government. Just reading it shows this so the guy who wrote the article didn’t even read it.

[Derleth]

tschild: I’m an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church. I did it for the same reason most Americans signed up for that whackjob’s homepage list.