__NOTOC__ The Korea Computer Center (KCC) is the

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

n government

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

research center. It was founded on 24 October 1990. KCC, which administered the .kp

country code A country code is a short alphanumeric identification code for countries and dependent areas. Its primary use is in data processing and communications. Several identification systems have been developed. The term ''country code'' frequently re ...

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domain name, domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the DNS root zone, root zone of the nam ...

until 2011, employs more than 1,000 people. KCC operates eight development and production centers, as well as eleven regional information centers. It runs the KCC Information Technology College and its Information Technology Institute. The KCC has branch offices in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

and the

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab E ...

. It has an interest in

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

research and started the development of the Red Star OS distribution localised for North Korea. KCC is a part of the political establishment and not entirely an IT company ''per se''. Its technological state and general modernity are seen as lagging well behind the rest of the world, even with the general

zeitgeist In 18th- and 19th-century German philosophy, a ''Zeitgeist'' (; ; capitalized in German) is an invisible agent, force, or daemon dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in world history. The term is usually associated with Georg W. F ...

. For example, the .kp

ccTLD A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all tw ...

was registered in 2007, but KCC did not manage to get a working registry for three years, despite the support of a European company. KCC has still not implemented a working

infrastructure, something the North Korean government has had as a goal for several years. While KCC mainly works on projects within North Korea, it has since 2001 served clients in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, and the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

. It operates

Naenara Naenara () is the official web portal of the North Korean government. History Naenara was the first website in North Korea, and was created in 1996. Usage Naenara carries publications such as '' The Pyongyang Times'', ' magazine, '' Korea ...

, North Korea's official web portal. KCC has reportedly collaborated with other state entities on cybersecurity and

surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing, or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as ...

initiatives. Nosotek is another North Korean IT venture company that develops computer games; two of them were published by

News Corporation The original incarnation of News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp. and also variously known as News Corporation Limited) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media corporation founded and controlled by media mogul Ru ...

. Another such company is the Pyongyang Information Center. In early 2015, the KCC was reorganized, with all functions not related to the development of Red Star OS being transferred to other entities.

Products

* "Sam heug"

search engine A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...

* "

" web browser * "Chosun Jang-Gi", a computer game * Kwangmyong, North Korea's closed national intranet * " Korean Dishes" (Chosŏn ryori), a food-related website * "Hana", a Korean language

input method editor An input method (or input method editor, commonly abbreviated IME) is an operating system component or program that enables users to generate characters not natively available on their input devices by using sequences of characters (or mouse ope ...

* "Koryo", English-Korean/Korean-English translation software using an electronic pen * "Nunbora", a Korean language voice recognition software * "Pulgunbyol" ( Red Star OS), a Linux distribution * "Cyber Friend", a video conference system * "Cyber Star", an electronic education system * "SilverStar Paduk", a Go computer game * "HMS Player", a media player * Samjiyon tabletSamjiyon Android tablet debuts at Pyongyang trade fair
''North Korea Tech'', 28 Sept 2012. Retrieved Nov 2012.

References

External links

Korea Computer Centre
{{authority control Government agencies of North Korea Information technology in North Korea Computer science institutes Research institutes in North Korea 1990 establishments in North Korea Information technology research institutes Computer companies of North Korea Computer hardware companies

Products

See also

References

External links