Enlarge / The North Korean border post for the Friendship Bridge, the rail link connecting North Korea to Russia. It now carries an Internet connection for North Korea to the rest of the world as well. (credit: DPRK KCNA)
As the US reportedly conducts a denial-of-service attack against North Korea’s access to the Internet, the regime of Kim Jong Un has gained another connection to help a select few North Koreans stay connected to the wider world—thanks to a Russian telecommunications provider. Despite UN sanctions and US unilateral moves to punish companies that do business with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 38 North’s Martyn Williams reports that Russian telecommunications provider TransTelekom (ТрансТелеКо́m) began routing North Korean Internet traffic at 5:38 PM Pyongyang time on Sunday.
The connection, Williams reported, offers a second route for traffic from North Korea’s Byol (“Star”) Internet service provider, which also runs North Korea’s cellular phone network. Byol offers foreigners in North Korea 1 Mbps Internet access for 600 euro (US$ 660) a month (with no data caps).
Up until now, all Byol’s traffic passed through a single link provided by China Unicom. But the new connection uses a telecommunications cable link that passes over the Friendship Bridge railway bridge—the only connection between North Korea and Russia. According to Dyn Research data, the new connection is now providing more than half of the route requests to North Korea’s networks. TransTelekom (sometimes spelled TransTeleComm) is owned by Russia’s railroad operator, Russian Railways.
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