In North Korea, thereโs no venturing down YouTube rabbit holes at 3 AM or scrolling mindlessly while half-watching Netflix. The internet in the Democratic Republic of North Korea (DPRK) is, unsurprisingly, a rather desolate cloud-based wasteland.
And according to a GitHub file dump that surfaced on the internet over the weekend, the rogue stateโs network has just 28 websites listed under its top-level domain of โ.kpโ.
The slim pickings on offer for North Korean citizens were stumbled upon when, according to another GitHub post, โone of North Koreaโs top-level name servers was accidentally configured to allow global DNS zone transfers. This allows anyone who performs an `AXFR` (zone transfer) request to the countryโs `ns2.kptc.kp` nameserver to get a copy of the nationโs top-level DNS data.โ
The leak confirmed that just a handful of websites exist in the DPRK, including a few educational sites, a flight booking website, a film website, a cooking site and even a very rudimentary version of a social network called โFriend.โ
You can actually check out North Koreaโs internet access for yourself, although given the unprecedented influx of international traffic at the moment, donโt be surprised if they take a while to load.
Now, go inside North Koreaโs luxury ski resort with empty chairlifts and untouched powder.
