If you're in the mood for a film, korfilm.com.kp is a website highlighting North Korea's film industry.
A food site cooks.org.kp is filled with pictures of "Korea's famous recipes".
The news-focussed sites are updated daily, but only present state propaganda, says Chad O'Carroll from NK News, a website that monitors North Korean media. He notes that they get very little traffic, are poorly designed and not user friendly.
Most of the websites are in Korean, but some have English versions as well. North Korea notoriously restricts access to the internet for its citizens, but it does, in fact, maintain some websites which can be seen outside the country.
On 22–24 December, North Korea experienced seven more Internet outages, including two on 23 December. On 27 December, the country experienced an outage on Internet (the third time of the year) and a mobile network. A similar outage, lasting for one and a half days, occurred in March 2013.
On 19 September 2016, North Korea's nameserver that contains information about all of the " .kp " websites was misconfigured, allowing researchers to access and publish the domain names and some of the file data about the site, including zone information for .kp, co.kp, com.kp, edu.kp, gov.kp, net.kp, org.kp, and rep.kp, revealing that North Korea has only 28 websites facing the Internet. However, the Kwangmyong intranet, available only to North Korea, was estimated to host between 1,000 and 5,500 internal-facing websites as of 2014.
There are about 30 websites, such as Uriminzokkiri, run by the DPRK government. South Korean police have identified 43 pro-North Korean websites that have foreign-based servers. The police report that these websites encourage hostile attitudes towards South Korea and Western countries, and portray the DPRK in a positive light. According to The Dong-a Ilbo, foreign-based websites include the following: Joseon Tongsin ( Korean News Service) and Guk-jeonseon in Japan, Unification Arirang in China, Minjok Tongsin in the United States, and twelve new pro-North Korean websites have launched, including the "Korea Network". In August 2010, BBC News reported that an agency contracted by the North Korean government has fielded an official DPRK YouTube channel, Facebook and Twitter accounts for Uriminzokkiri. Both the Twitter and YouTube accounts are solely in Korean. The BBC reported, "In a recent Twitter post, the North Koreans said the current administration in South Korea was 'a prostitute' of the US", though this wording may be a poor translation into English. Among some of the content on the official website is an image of a US soldier being followed by two missiles, along with various other cartoons, pictures and text, with largely anti-US and anti-South Korean sentiment. In September 2007 the .kp top-level domain was created. It contains websites connected to the North Korean government.
South Korean Internet users must comply with Trade Laws with North Korea (Article 9 Section 2) in which one needs to have the Ministry of Unification 's approval to contact North Koreans through their websites.
In December 2014, North Korea was accused of a hack attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment. From 19–21 December, North Korea experienced technical difficulties with Internet access. On December 22, North Korea suffered a complete Internet link failure, resulting in loss of Internet access from outside the country for which the United States is suspected. On 23 December, nine hours after the outage, the country regained Internet access, albeit "partial and potentially unstable with other websites still inaccessible." On 22–24 December, North Korea experienced seven more Internet outages, including two on 23 December. On 27 December, the country experienced an outage on Internet (the third time of the year) and a mobile network. A similar outage, lasting for one and a half days, occurred in March 2013.
In April 2016, North Korea began to block Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and South Korean websites, due to "its concern with the spread of online information".
A group of North Korean hackers based in Shenyang, China, developed and sold auto-programs (programs that allow player characters to earn experience and in-game currency while the player does none of the work) for an online game Lineage and a South Korean citizen was arrested in May 2011 for purchasing it.
About 1 million people in North Korea have cellphones, but they are not phones with Internet access.
So much so that North Korea was named one of 12 "enemies" of the Internet last year by Reporters Without Borders, which monitors censorship globally. "We still consider North Korea as an enemy of the Internet," Delphine Hagland, the group's director in Washington, D.C., told NBC News. Other countries making that list included China, Iran, Syria and Vietnam.
That brief mobile Internet availability was not tied to Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt's visit to the country, along with former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. The two had gone to North Korea in January to seek the release of American detainee Kenneth Bae — which did not happen — as well as to promote Internet freedom.
North Korea did, for a very short time recently, allow tourists who were staying at one hotel to have Internet access via their 3G cellphones. But that access was yanked within less than a month, according to a report in Wired UK.