North Korea has millions of 3G subscribers, says Koryolink CEO

North Korea's relationship with the world wide web has been mostly non-existent, with most of those who reside in the nation being forbade from accessing the Internet. Slowly, however, connectivity has leaked into the northern Korean nation, which now has nearly 2 million 3G subscribers, according to service provider Koryolink's CEO Ezz Heikal.

This represents a fairly drastic rise in numbers, with subscribers hitting a million a tad over a year ago. Of course, just because an individual subscribes to 3G in North Korea does not mean they have access to the Internet – quite the contrary. Subscribers are able to make voice calls and send text messages, and cannot access the world wide web and cannot communication internationally.

Long-term visitors have different access that is a bit more free, but still regulates international access. And both of these are different than the 3G regulations that visitors were briefly under earlier this year, which allowed for access to the Internet in addition to texting and voice calls. The network availability spurred a flood of photos from within the closed-off nation on Instagram, one of which is featured above.

Sadly, the Internet access wasn't available for even a solid month before it was cut-off from visitors, leaving them with just voice connectivity and nothing else. No official reason was given for why the Internet access was pulled, with some speculating that the amount of content from within the nation being published online fueled the decision.

[via North Korea Tech]

Image via Joseph Ferris III