🔗 Kwangmyong, the North-Korea-Wide-Web

🔗 Mass surveillance 🔗 Computing 🔗 Korea 🔗 Korea/North Korea

Kwangmyong (literally “Bright Light”) is a North Korean "walled garden" national intranet service opened in 2000.

The network uses domain names under the .kp top level domain that are not accessible from the global Internet. As of 2016 the network uses IPv4 addresses reserved for private networks in the 10.0.0.0/8 range. North Koreans often find it more convenient to access sites by their IP address rather than by URL using Latin characters. Like the global Internet, the network hosts content accessible with web browsers, and provides an internal web search engine. It also provides email services and news groups.

Only foreigners and a small number of government officials/scholars/elites are allowed to use the global Internet in North Korea, making Kwangmyong the only computer network available to most North Korean citizens. It is a free service for public use.