Researchers Estimate that 23% of North Koreans Now Own Mobile Phones

What they don’t know is how many of these phones are smartphones? It seems in a country with only a regime controlled intranet, a smartphone is not as useful as in other countries:

An estimated six million North Koreans have cellular phones as of 2021, a recently published report by a state-run think-tank said, indicating a wave of change among the people living under the oppressive regime.

The Korea Institute for National Unification conducted a study on how distribution of mobile phones is affecting North Koreans’ quality of life, in which they presumed that a little over 23 percent of some 25.7 million North Koreans own smartphones. The consensus was based on estimations by various research institutes and organizations.

The study said that cell phone use in the hermit kingdom rapidly has increased since 2009, which is around the time when network distribution for mobile phones started spreading among the public. According to the researchers, the number of phones using a landline is expected to be around 1.18 million, unchanged since 2008. At the same time, cellphones in North Korea outnumbered landline phones in 2011 and kept growing.

It is yet unclear how much of the mobile phones distributed in North Korea are smartphones, due to lack of related statistics. But researchers speculated that smartphones will eventually outlast any other type of mobile phone in the country, based on anecdotal evidence.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.