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One of the few examples of potentially effectively engagement by foreign governments …

in North Korea is being shut down by the regime after being outed. The Diplomat reports that the unsecured wireless networks of foreign embassies had allowed North Koreans living nearby to access the internet without restriction, and that the hunger of North Koreans for that information was so great that it caused something of a housing boom in those neighborhoods.

Now that the security forces know about this, they’re cracking down, and forcing embassies to secure and password-protect their signals. I wonder if this means that my regular visits from Pyongyang are going to come to an end. I suppose not, because those visits are almost certainly coming from the North Korean intelligence services, but might be coming from embassies or other foreigners. (Hat tip to a new friend.)

4 Responses

  1. One would think that embassies’ networks could easily be password-protected and the passwords would be “open secrets.”

  2. I wonder if there’s any way to set up a chain of WiFi so more folks can access the Internet? For example, someone near the embassies who has the hypothetical new password can leech off their signal and become a wireless hotspot of their own, someone further away can leech of the first person’s signal and do the same, and so on and so forth.