The Past, Present, and the Future of North Korea’s Artificial Intelligence
At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2016, the term ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)’ was coined. Since then, a new chapter of human development began, leading to questions about how our lives have merged and are now immersed with the physical, digital and biological world in many ways. These include those 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
Literally meaning ‘future’ in Korea, Mirae is a system of wireless intranet for handheld phones which also requires a Mirae SIM card for its operation. Just a few years ago, North Korea primarily relied on cheap mobile phones from China for communication. Today, however, North Korea is 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 held 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 anything embracing capitalist culture. The country’s recent law eradicating reactionary ideology and culture reflects an increased effort to strengthen internal control through the aid of propaganda.
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 its self reliance. 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 the Mirae SIM card, North Korea is able to control access to global news by North Korean households, 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. These are meant to create a sense of pride and cultural nationalism for the country and to highlight its homogenous nationalistic race. It is clear that global platforms such as Facebook have huge influence over the people during __adjective___ events like the Arab Spring Revolution and the Orange Revolution. Witnessing such an effect, Pyongyang may have viewed the events as destabilizing and a threat to their Party system, leading them to create their own way of strengthening technological capabilities.
Eunbyul Program
A couple of years ago, 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 before the era of AlphaGo, North Korea’s Eunbyul had already won international competitions six times and was dominating the world’s digital Go scene.
Eunbyul is an AI program that has been in development in the North Korean Computer Centre since 1997. The basis of its algorithm is no different from that of AlphaGo. Both programs use advanced-search tree algorithms to decide 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 invented its own voice recognition software, Ryongnamsan. By employing deep-learning algorithms, Ryongnamsan works like any other voice recognition programs we might find our phones, such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant.
With these technologies, North Korea is able to demonstrate 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. The country 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 now 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, once an AI powerhouse, hitting the wall?
For example, there are significant differences between Eunbyul and AlphaGo. Eunbyul used 16 CPUs (central processing unit) in 2010, while AlphaGo had 1 920 CPUs and 280 GPUs (graphics processing unit) in its Match against the human Go master in 2016. Higher CPU number simply 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, the 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 out of fear of hurting their image, as well as human rights concerns. As well, access to trained or qualified personnel is a challenge. Likewise, some required equipment are unable to 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. Therefore, the country’s lack of access to the international community makes data access, sharing and pooling difficult. More investment in hardware and software is unavoidable for securing 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 circumstances behind its development, North Korean technology has been lagging behind the many technological advancements of the rest of the world. A 2017 NK News report states that the North Korean “tech world is filled with examples of knockoffs of foreign made products;” for example, they criticized North Korean imitations of Apple’s iPad.
North Korean uses of machine learning do demonstrate a level of recognition that the state has towards AI. Even with its impoverished economy, the state has been prioritizing the development of AI on its agenda. However, is North Korea’s pursuit of high technology purposeful progress or mere propaganda? The state appears to have very different goals regarding AI advancement. 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 improve the lives of a select urbanite elite based in Pyongyang. Instead, 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 is clear that North Korea is not as disconnected in technology as originally stereotyped. 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 employing 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 showcase in the future.
