North Korea opens doors to e-mail

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By Sumner Lemon

(IDG) -- In a further sign that North Korea hopes to use high technology to rebuild its moribund economy, Shenyang Public Information Industry Co. Ltd. last month announced the availability of e-mail services to the reclusive Stalinist nation.

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Charges for sending and receiving e-mail through the service, which is called Silibank, are based on the amount of data transferred -- and prices, billed in U.S. dollars rather than Chinese renminbi, aren't cheap. A message that is less than 10K bytes in size costs US$1.50. Prices increase with the size of the e-mail message. At the high end of the service's price list, a 1,600K-byte message costs $49.50 to send, with an additional $0.04 charged for each additional kilobyte of data.

To use the service, which is aimed at corporations rather than individuals, users must provide contact information, including their nationality; identify which companies and individuals they do business with in North Korea; and pay a registration fee of $100, in addition to a monthly service charge. At registration, prospective users are required to pay three months' service charge in advance, the company said.

The Silibank e-mail service is available only to registered users and relies on two e-mail servers, one located in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang and the other in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital. These exchange e-mail once per hour, according to information posted on the company's Web site. In the future, the company hopes to offer a permanent connection for the service.

Outside North Korea, users connect to the service using an e-mail client, such as Microsoft Outlook, to send and receive e-mail over the Internet, it said. Details were not immediately available of how North Korean users access the mail services.

Over the last year, North Korea's government has shown an interest in studying how high-technology businesses and tools might help salvage its sinking economy. In January, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il made a secretive visit to China that included stops at high-tech companies in Shanghai and a visit to Shenzhen, the first special economic zone created to handle the modern opening of China's economy.

In April, North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly announced plans to promote the development of the country's science and technology industries and modernize its industrial base. Two months later, a South Korean businessman, Bit Computer Co. Ltd. President Cho Hyun Jung, announced plans to open a satellite-based Internet link in North Korea.