This picture taken by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on February 16, 2013 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (4th R) and senior senior officials from the party, government and army posing before the statues of late leaders Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il at Mangyongdae Revolutionary School in Pyongyang.
Well, that was quick. Just weeks after announcing that foreign visitors would be allowed access 3G networks, North Korea has changed course. Beijing-based Koryo Tours, which runs trips to the reclusive country, announced the change on its website:
3G access is no longer available for tourists to the DPRK [North Korea]. Sim cards can still be purchased to make international calls but no internet access is available.
The short-lived change, announced March 1, enabled out-of-towners to surf the web through Korolink’s 3G network. Last month, the Associated Press’s Pyongyang Bureau Chief Jean H. Lee was among the first to tweet from the inside.
[tweet https://twitter.com/newsjean/status/310209707950366720%5D
[tweet https://twitter.com/newsjean/status/31044504104063795%5D
The change of policy comes amid escalating tension on the Korean Peninsula. This week, the country cut its telephone connection to South Korea, TIME reported. “Under the situation where a war may break out any moment, there is no need to keep north-south military communications which were laid between the militaries of both sides,” the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said. “War and confrontation can never go together with dialogue and reconciliation under any circumstances.”
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