Cellphones Can Spark Change in North Korea

[Commentary] An odd thing is happening in North Korea, and it may be happening faster than anyone anticipated. Access to mobile technology has exploded, at least among those who can afford it. In the capital and other major cities, there are now two million or so people who lie between the urban elites, who have monopolized the country’s resources, and its desperately poor villagers. The speed of this change isn’t often appreciated by outsiders. In a 14-month span between 2012 and 2013, the number of mobile-phone subscribers in North Korea doubled to two million from one million, and it now may exceed 2.5 million, according to Orascom Telecom Media & Technology Holding of Egypt, which provides cell service to North Korea in a joint venture with the government. Just a fraction of those devices are smartphones -- in 2013 the government said it would import 100,000 smartphones from China—and those owned by ordinary citizens can’t access the global Internet. But North Korea, a country in which cellphones were banned until it built its own network in 2008, has become a place where it is common for teens to text one another, just as they do elsewhere.