While North Korea has worked hard to emphasize the importance of localization of production and self-sufficiency, a Daily NK survey found that the country uses foreign software in the production of types of publications published online.
By analyzing the metadata of downloaded documents in the nojak category of North Korea’s “Korean Books” (www.korean-books.com.kp) online page, Daily NK discovered that they were written with US word processing software.But it’s not the first time Microsoft Word (MS Agudeza).
Nojak refers to books describing the revolutionary socialist theories or the statements of Kim Jong Un, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.This literature is used to deify the leaders of the country.
The Daily NK research revealed that Kim Il Sung’s e-book “On the Exposure of Mutual Defense Treaty Reaction between the Republic of Korea and the United States of America” written in MS Word before being changed to PDF with Adobe’s “Acrobat Distiller”.
Acrobat Distiller is a program that converts files created into PDF applications.
Another document through Kim Jong Un entitled “The members of the Korean Youth Corps are the true sons and daughters of the socialist homeland, let’s go to the young revolutionaries” was also elaborated using the same method, just like other nojaks uploaded to the site.
North Korea has created its own edition of MS Office called Sogwang Office, and the country’s government claims that this software has contributed greatly to “office automation”.Sogwang’s office is on all North Korean laptops and smartphones.
While the regime informs its population of the importance of buying “North Korean-made” products and the use of the country’s technology, the country’s government prefers the greater capacity and convenience of foreign products.
Daily NK research also revealed that Adobe’s Indesign software was used to create some North Korean publications.
Several books downloaded from Korean Books’ website, “Korea”, “Land of Beautiful Landscapes” and “Outer Trade”, were produced with Indesign.
Indesign is used for layout and layout of pages in printed and virtual media.
Apart from that, North Korea prints the Rodong Sinmun with Quark QuarkXPress’ virtual editing program and uses Adobe Photoshop for photo editing.
Daily NK has not been able to determine whether these systems are being used in North Korea under official license; however, since U.S. corporations are prohibited from promoting products in North Korea under foreign sanctions opposed to the country, the North Korean government will most likely use the software illegally and without an official license.
Daily NK has also discovered that many North Korean Internet sites work on Apache Apache servers from Apache Software Foundation and use Internet technologies such as JavaScript and PHP.
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