Banyan | Phoney war

摘要

THE world may think of North Korea as a "hermit kingdom", but its 25m citizens are surprisingly wired. Perhaps half of all urban households now own a Chinese-made "notel", a portable media player. Over 3m have mobile-phone subscriptions, with Northern-branded smartphones like the Pyongyang and the Ari-rang. South Korean ngos that smuggle foreign films and tv shows into the North on usbs receive text messages from their contacts there with requests for specific titles (South Korean soaps and Holly wood dramas are popular).