North Korea has launched an email service that "guarantees the privacy of correspondence", although it's likely very few North Koreans have Internet access at all.

The report from the official North Korean news agency, Korean Central News Agency, which is itself run from a Japanese-domain Web site, was sparse on details. Like the country itself, North Korea online remains heavily restricted.

The dispatch said that "the email service guarantees the privacy of correspondence as it has a network security system," although no technical details were included. It did say that it had "a large transmission ban", which appears to mean high-speed bandwidth. The system is operating from North Korea's International Communications Center and works over local dial-up with a user name and password, and is free of charge.

[ Read more ]