New Delhi: Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is back from his much-discussed visit to the secluded country of North Korea and he has posted an edited version of the comments that he had made on arrival in Beijing from Pyongyang in a Google Plus post.
Schmidt says that the "the technology in North Korea is very limited right now," though "there is a 3G network that is a joint venture with an Egyptian company called Orascom. It is a 2100 Megahertz SMS-based technology network, that does not, for example, allow users to have a data connection and use smart phones. It would be very easy for them to turn the Internet on for this 3G network. Estimates are that are about a million and a half phones in the DPRK with some growth planned in the near future."
The North Korean Internet that Schmidt had the opportunity to see during his visit is quite like what it has been described in the past. "There is a supervised Internet and a Korean Intranet. (It appeared supervised in that people were not able to use the internet without someone else watching them). There's a private intranet that is linked with their universities. Again, it would be easy to connect these networks to the global Internet," Schmidt said in the post.
Schmidt asserted that the Internet was crucial for North Korea to be able to grow economically. "As the world becomes increasingly connected, the North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world and their economic growth. It will make it harder for them to catch up economically."
"We made that alternative very, very clear. Once the internet starts in any country, citizens in that country can certainly build on top of it, but the government has to do one thing: open up the Internet first. They have to make it possible for people to use the Internet, which the government of North Korea has not yet done. It is their choice now, and in my view, it's time for them to start, or they will remain behind."
Schmidt had gone on a private trip to North Korea with former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. The nine-member delegation also included Jared Cohen, director of the company's Google Ideas think tank.
Schmidt, CEO of the US-based Internet giant until 2011, has been a vocal proponent of Internet freedom and openness around the world and has also posted a couple of photos that he had taken during his North Korea visit on the Google Plus post.
In Pyongyang, Schmidt's group visited a university computer lab and met with students and North Korean officials. They toured the frigid brick building in central Pyongyang that is the heart of North Korea's own computer industry, where Schmidt asked pointed questions about a new homegrown tablet computer as well as its Red Star operating system. He briefly donned a pair of 3-D goggles during the tour of the Korea Computer Centre.
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