North Korean cell phone carriers impose charges on calls made between people who use different service providers, which has led many users to avoid calling those using different carriers altogether, Daily NK has learned.
“When making phone calls from Kang Song Net to Kang Song Net devices, or from Koryolink to Koryolink devices, only the person making the call has to pay money,” a source in North Korea told Daily NK on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “However, when you make calls to people with different phone carriers, such as from Kang Song to Koryo, or from Koryo to Kang Song, then both the caller and the receiver have to pay money.”
In South Korea, phone users do not pay additional charges when calling people who use different domestic carriers; instead, additional fees are only imposed when making international calls. North Korean carriers, however, apply additional fees to even domestic phone calls.
“When making calls between different mobile networks, the per minute cost that the receiver pays is about 1.5 times higher than the price paid by the caller for calls between the same mobile network. As a result, people think that those who make phone calls to other networks lack common sense,” the source said.
“Because there are additional charges when taking calls from people using different providers, people do their best not to answer phone calls from people using other carriers. If they have to pick up the phone, they get straight to the point before hanging up.”
For users who pay their service fees on a quarterly basis, North Korean phone service providers provide them with a set amount of “mobile money,” talk time, and messages for free. People can increase limits on their allowed call times by recharging their cache of “mobile money.”
In terms of fees for call times, Koryolink charges KPW 12 per minute, while Kang Song Net charges KPW 9 per minute. In short, calls made by users of Koryolink or Kang Song Net to another carrier would cost the receiver, in mobile money, KPW 18 and KPW 13.5, respectively.
Based on an investigation conducted by Daily NK in October 2020, North Koreans had been able to increase their talk time by one minute for KPW 4 of mobile money. The cost, however, has increased significantly over the past three years, which has forced North Koreans to be more conscious of how many call minutes or messages they have used.
Video calls, cellular data also quite expensive
Fees for video calls and the use of cellular data are also very expensive for many North Koreans, the source said.
“Because video calling costs so much in US dollars or Chinese yuan, only people with a lot of money or government officials use video calls. For example, business people may use video calls to visually check inventory before it is shipped. Unless they absolutely have to, regular people almost never use video calls.”
The source added: “Using cellular data is also very expensive. Where I live, it costs around RMB 100 [approximately USD 14] to recharge one gigabyte of data.”
Translated by Matthew Eteuati, Jr. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Daily NK works with a network of sources who live inside North Korea, China and elsewhere. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK’s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page here.
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