North Korea is perhaps the most secretive and authoritative country in the world. North Koreans are banned from traveling abroad except on state business and from using a major portion of the web including social media like Facebook, Twitter, etc and that helps the country in maintaining a strict control over the masses.
Although all of these curbs are also present in other countries like China but the effect is much more pronounced here since a majority of the people don’t know about anything happening outside their villages. But, recently, in a move to have a better-connected country, North Korea’s sole Internet Service Provider company named Star Co. Dyn was known to have registered a social media portal in North Korea that used Facebook’s graphics scheme. The address was www.starcon.net.kp and it begged the question whether it was official or not.
The website’s hosting was also in North Korea itself and since not many people are into social media there, it is safe to assume that government people were involved in it, directly or indirectly. The network was named Best Korea’s Social Network.
North Korea launches globally accessible Facebook clone (hosted in North Korea!) https://t.co/EbwSH8Zzc9 pic.twitter.com/WotGVKWTAc
— Dyn Research (@DynResearch) May 27, 2016
There is already a Kim Jong-Un parody account. That didn’t take long. https://t.co/Y81L56IJE0 pic.twitter.com/gCd2OKflxg
— Doug Madory (@DougMadory) May 27, 2016
The website was built using the PHP Dolphin that is normally used by people to start their own social media network. Now there was no security in place for the social media website and a Scottish teenager was easily able to access the social media website using the ominous login details of Username:admin and Password: password. Many believe this is just a hoax by people to garner attention and it has nothing to do with either North Korea or its dictatorial regime. However, it could be an attempt to create something that allows people to connect more with each other. The trolls are already breaking the internet with Kin Jong-un Leading the way. What are your thoughts on this?
