North Korea is probably the most reclusive country in the world. It’s notoriously difficult to gain entry to the so-called Hermit Kingdom, even for mere tourists. And even then it’s hard to see what life inside the regime is really like. But now you can at least know what it feels like—and sounds like—to use a North Korean cell phone as a foreigner.
Will Scott, an American academic who teaches computer science in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital and largest city, got a local cell phone subscription in the fall of 2015. On Thursday, Scott recreated what the standard recorded messages for subscribers of KoryoLink, the state-sanctioned mobile provider, sound like in an interactive simulator of sorts he posted on his website.
“Sorry, your call is restricted,” says the voice of a KoryoLink employee when foreigners try to make local phone calls, which are not allowed, according to Scott.
The cell phone subscription available to foreigners is expensive, relatively hard to get, and has limited service. It cost Scott 80 euros (around $85) just to sign up to the voice service, and 120 euros (around $128) for the data service. A monthly subscription for a meager 50 megabytes of 3G data goes for $12, Scott said. Moreover, to even get the plan he had to fill out a form with his liaison the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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Here’s What Making Cell Phone Calls in North Korea Sounds Like
