The Past, Present, and Future of Artificial Intelligence in North Korea
At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2016, the term ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)’ was coined. Since then, a new chapter of human development has begun, leading to questions about how our lives have merged with and are now in many ways immersed with the physical, digital and biological world. These include those ways that promise us opportunities and also those that lead us to potential peril. With the global world aggressively shifting its investment towards adopting Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) technology in all aspects of life, this week we will look into where North Korea — universally well-known as the most isolated country in the world — stands in this new modern era. Is Artificial Intelligence a Far Far Away Future for North Korea? Look again, because it’s closer than you might think.
Self-Reliance Ideology and Mirae
Just a few years ago, North Korea primarily relied on cheap mobile phones from China for communication. Today, however, North Korea seems determined to strongly implement and assert its self-reliance ideology through its own technological development.
But where did this ‘Self-Reliance’ ideology come from?
Kim Jong Un’s revolutionary ideology is based on the state mottos of “Era of Our State First” and “Principle of Putting the People First”. These mottos were further emphasized by authorities, through educational reference documents, to North Korean party members and workers during the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee in December 2021. To uproot non-socialist ideology and “overcome foreign pressures,” these documents stressed the importance of banning any expression of capitalist ideology and or of embracing capitalist culture. The country’s recent law eradicating reactionary ideology and culture reflects an increased effort, through the use of propaganda, to strengthen internal control.
As we are beginning to see, North Korea seems to have taken advantage of A.I. development as a mechanism to strengthen its concept of juche–or, ‘self-reliance’ ideology. For example, Mirae–or, ’future’ in the Korean language–is a system of wireless intranet developed by North Korea for handheld phones. These phones require a Mirae SIM card for its operation. With this technology, North Korea is able to control its citizens’ access to global news, with the purpose of preventing them from being exposed to foreign propaganda, economic opportunity, communication, entertainment, and espionage.
Other advancements in North Korean technology include those that promote the use of the Korean language. This is meant to create a sense of pride and cultural nationalism for the country, and to highlight its existence as a homogenous nationalistic race. It is clear that global media platforms such as Facebook have a huge influence over the people during polarizing events like the Arab Spring Revolution and the Orange Revolution. Witnessing such an effect, Pyongyang may have viewed these events as destabilizing and threatening to their Party system, leading them to fashion their own way of strengthening technological capabilities.
Eunbyul Program
A couple of years ago in 2015, the world witnessed an astonishing feat in the scene of artificial intelligence: Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo became the first computer program to defeat a professional human world champion Go player. What many do not know, however, is that long before the era of AlphaGo, North Korea’s Eunbyul had already won several international competitions and was dominating the world’s digital Go scene.
Eunbyul is an AI program that has been in development at the North Korean Computer Centre since 1997. The basis of its algorithm is no different from that of Google’s AlphaGo. Both programs use advanced-search tree algorithms to determine the most promising move, based on knowledge previously gained via machine learning.
Ryongnamsan Software
According to a 2017 paper by the Kim Il Sung University’s scholarly journal, North Korea has already successfully developed its own voice recognition software, Ryongnamsan. By employing deep-learning algorithms, Ryongnamsan works like any other voice recognition program we might find our phones, such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant.
With technologies such as the Eunbyul program and Ryongnamsan software, North Korea demonstrates the country’s high-level AI capabilities of deep learning and artificial neural networks. Independently producing cutting-edge AI algorithms, they seem to have caught up with the latest technologies of the world. North Korea is also believed to be currently developing other AI-based technologies, including facial and finger recognition involving complex computing methods of vector space models, and supporting vector machines.
Limitations
Despite possessing fundamental AI technologies, it seems increasingly difficult for North Korea to advance its development. When compared to leading products of the field, their limitations surface. Is North Korea, in trying to establish itself as an AI powerhouse, hitting a wall?
For one, there are some differences between the Eunbyul and AlphaGo. Eunbyul ran with 16 CPUs in 2010, while AlphaGo had 920 CPUs and 280 GPUs in its match against the human Go master in 2016 (higher CPU means a faster clock speed). Ryongnamsan’s shortcomings are notable as well: its hardware is equivalent to that of a business personal computer and as a result, its performance is below the capabilities of Siri or Alexa.
We cannot help but connect these failures to circumstances such as difficulty gathering resources, strained economic relationships, and international isolation from the rest of the world. Countries or companies likely avoid business with North Korea because of human rights concerns, out of fear of damaging their reputation, or facing international reproach. As well, access to trained or qualified personnel is a challenge. Likewise, some required equipment cannot be produced in-state and are very expensive to source or fund. Finally, many AI applications and development procedures depend on access to large pools of data. In this way, the country’s lack of access to the international community makes data access, sharing and pooling difficult. More investment in hardware and software is required for developing more advanced AI technologies, and it is questionable whether North Korea can push this development with its limited resources.
Concluding thoughts
Although impressive given the limitations and extenuating circumstances behind its development, North Korean technology has been lagging behind the many technological advancements of the rest of the world. A 2017 report by NK News states that the North Korean tech world is “filled with examples of knockoffs of foreign made products;” for example, the report heavily criticized North Korean imitations of Apple’s iPad.
North Korean uses of machine learning to demonstrate a level of recognition that the state has towards AI. Even with its impoverished economy, the state has prioritized the development of AI on its agenda. We must consider, however, whether North Korea’s reported pursuit of technology can be considered purposeful progress or mere propaganda. Their main priorities are not necessarily productivity, efficiency, or a vision of empowering their own citizens with technologies to improve their lives; if anything, North Korean AI seems to only have improved the lives of a select urbanite elite based in Pyongyang. Whatever they might say, the main objective of the state seems to be fulfilling a desire to catch up with other nations–especially their adversaries–and regional leaders in technology, and thus being able to publicize such efforts as the successful fruits of labour by the Supreme Leader.
Whatever the reason or motivation for their drive, it seems that North Korea is not as disconnected from technology as originally and widely believed. Though international isolation has hindered the potential growth of North Korean developments, it has not totally eliminated them from the ongoing race towards technological advancement. The North Korean ambition of using 4IR tech to strengthen state power is a legitimate and achievable goal, and we will have to wait to see what other AI-powered technologies North Korea will continue to showcase in the future.
This Medium article has been brought to you by the HanVoice UBC x HanVoice SFU chapters, who have come together to examine the development of A.I. technology in North Korea.
We are relying on the limited information provided by North Korean defectors or researchers who have a network or connections in North Korea. North Korean defectors are the embodiment of our hope of bridging the rest of the world with North Korea. By working in our university chapters, we acknowledge our essential duty of raising awareness for the ongoing North Korean human crises, as well as advocating the rights of North Korean defectors in Canada.
