Fried Man

The Dear Leader has a website!

The Dear Leader has a website ! (also on www.chinatechnews.com)

For those wanting to step back a few years in web technology and content management, I am happy to announce that North Korea's official website is now open for public viewing at http://www.kcckp.net/external_e/ . The best part of coming to the website is the great martial midi music (so 1980’s) that greets you when you come to the site. Unfortunately, it does not loop and stops playing what I think me be a rendition of the North Korean National Anthem.

As a former usability specialist, I can declare North Korea’s website FLASH-Free. They have paid close attention towards creating a clean and simple interface probably using the precepts of that other great web usability ultimate leader, Jakob Nielsen. A messy website is a non glorious website . No floating or blinking ads on this page…or in North Korea in general.

However, in order to read the contents of the site you need to register online with the North Korean government your personal details. If the very thought of this brings a chill to your heart then feel free to use the profile that I created so you can log in. I registered under the name George Bush with a user ID of bigchief and a password of ilovekorea. The funny thing is that when I got to the point where it asked for nationality, there was no choice to be American or the United States. There were many smaller African and Middle Eastern countries there, but no choice for the user to select USA. The closest choice was English which I guess is one of the countries that did not call North Korea one of the axises or axes of evil.

Browsing and exploring the site reminded me of some of the more “ironic” Scandinavian design sites on the web with stark clean lines and zen like minimalism…but with lots and lots of pictures of Kim Ill Sung. Overall, it’s a good site with a lot of PR friendly images of North Korean people and countryside. However, I did note that when I clicked on the button labeled “Korea is One” the site linked to a 404 error, perhaps this is still under construction, planning and/or mass deployment on the DMZ.

This new site is a vast improvement over their previous web presence on the Korean Central News Agency from Japan at http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm which is mostly badly translated rantings against US aggression. However, for anyone following the news recently, the videogame war tactical simulation Ghost Recon 2 from French based Ubisoft, was recently used as proof by North Korea of US military desires to invade the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (N. Korea) since the plot involved North Korea invading China and having US Special forces being called in to save China with a covert insertion into the fatherland. Perhaps the French know something that we don’t.

Overall, since visits into North Korea for westerners is not only rare but quite expensive, browsing and checking their websites is the next best thing to being there…it may actually be better than being there in fact.

Before you go, be aware that North Korea is accused by the US of trying to develop nuclear weapons, manufacturing narcotics and gambling sites. However, if you dig deep into the website section titled “IT Industry” you will find an even more troubling little blurb on what North Korea may be planning to unleash onto the world.

KCC regards it as its immediate target to reach the world level and to be competent in the world market in a few years in development of Linux-based operating system and applications, computer-aided high technology and services with its own core technology.

Can you picture Tux the Linux mascot with a pompadour? Open source in the most closed country on Earth. Weird.

A day in the life of a Chinese Blogger

A day in the life of a Chinese Blogger ( a veiled reference to John Pasden at Sinosplice.com) was orginially posted on www.chinatechnews.com

Across China on personal desktops and laptop computers, an army of writers, teachers and even technicians write down their daily journal and thoughts about life and leisure of 21st century China. Known as bloggers a bastardized shortening of web loggers, these hardy souls are motivated by their need to share their experience with others on a very public and global forum.

Lets take the typical China foreign blogger John X as a fictional example. John X gets up very early each morning, before he goes out to teach his English language class, to update his blog with his latest thoughts and writings. Unless he has a burning issue on his mind that he needs to opine on, like the deplorable sound of Chinese Pop Music, he will trawl the web for China related news or simply read the links provided by other bloggers.

Finding some recent news tidbits of some funny stories like the op-ed piece of a writer in the China Daily calling the term "Peking Duck" racist since it perpetuates the old colonial linguistic usage of Peking, John X will now proceed to write a short essay, linking to the original article, and explaining to his readers that the China Daily writer is quite surely smoking crack and/or is a terrible hack writer.

After reading over his new posting, he checks it for any politically sensitive terms which may cause the government to block his site. Such taboo terms as ***** **** and **** ***** will get him locked out or shut down by over enthusiastic censors. Although he is not concerned as much about being shut down, he does not want all the writers that share the host server with him to get locked out as well. Living in China, we learn to pick the battles that we feel strongly about and let the host of other indignities pass through quiet compliance.

After checking that things look as if it can pass muster, he uses his Movable Type blogging software to post and update his site. Immediately, RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication) gets sent to other blogs so that they know that he has posted an update to his site and can further link to what he has written. If some of the bigger blogs in the states picks up his recent postings of how "Peking Duck" is not a racist term, than like wildfire, other people begin discussions of that topic while linking to John 's blog as well as to China Daily and the original posting. All hell breaks loose when http://www.Instapundit.com reads and links to it.

Before you know it, the whole Blogosphere (the term bloggers use to describe the buzz) is talking about “Peking Duck." As each person links to the article and the post, Peking Duck now begins to rise in its Google Rankings. Whenever anyone types in “Peking Duck" the article by John X will now be the lead link and not the recipe for directions on cooking Peking Duck.

Soon, the regular media will pick up on the story and start their own debate of the legitimacy of the term “Peking Duck" and even interview John X himself on his opinions and perspective. Just as the crescendo of hype begins to build, some other blogger in Iraq writes a posting on their blog of why Oakley sunglasses look cool on US soldiers and the big Cycloptic eye of the media and blogosphere turns away to gaze and stare at Iraq now.

The next day John X checks out his traffic log and sees the big spike as users from around the world flocked to read his blog. A week later, only the loyal 10-15 people who are friends of John X continue to read him on a daily basis. The Chinese censors move too slow to read every blog and posting that pops up. John's next few postings is just about how bad the toilets in his school are which not surprisingly fails to catch the attention of other bloggers even in China. So much for his next 15 minutes.

However, deep in the bowels of 's servers, the links and the articles are still there. Waiting and cached for posterity, Google never forgets, it just buries the dead links until the time is right.

This article is actually based on this post by the Brainysmurf