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North to Open Itself through Internet

Posted July. 13, 2003 22:04,   

한국어

It is expected that South Korean companies can purchase North Korean software and consign development of programs and websites through the Internet since there is a North Korean company carrying out such tasks.

The Korea Lotto Joint Venture, the first Internet-based company in the North, announced Sunday that it will start direct contacts with companies in the South through the Internet, including selling software, producing and translating websites, and developing programs.

In other words, the company plans to sell software developed in the North to their South Korean counterparts, develop programs for them, and translate Korean e-commerce websites into Chinese or Russian, which suggests that the North has declared it would open the country through the Internet.

“If the North complies to the current laws on inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation such as allowing us to contact its residents and applying for joint ventures, the inter-Korean commerce through the Internet is possible,” said the Ministry of Unification.

South Korean companies expects that the active utilization of North Korean manpower will be able to reduce the costs of various computer program developments to one-tenth of the current level since there are a great deal of cheap high-skilled programmers in the North. The North Korean company has its server in Pyeongyang and runs the websites of Korea Baduk (www.mybaduk.com) and the Internet lotto (www.dklotto.com).

Meanwhile, a company in the South was known to have signed for a business providing books on the Internet and technologies and entrusting the translation of Korean books with the North.



Tae-Han Kim freewill@donga.com