North Korea Is Allegedly Building Its Own Tablet, The Samjiyeon

We’ve heard previous reports that North Korea was building their own PCs, but a more recent report out of the South Korean Dong-a Ilbo newspaper suggests that a tablet may also be in the works.

It’s unclear whether or not the tablet was made in North Korea or in China, though previous reports of a North Korean tablet demoed at the Pyongyang International Trade Fair were said to be developed at the Korea Computer Center. Then again, the national media has also said their computers were “designed and developed purely using [their] own expertise,” though a little digging proved otherwise.

There is said to be no camera on the device, and it has no access to the Internet. There is, however, an encyclopedia, games, eBooks and a map service.

They call it the Samjiyeon, which is a district in the Ryanggang province of North Korea that has its own airport, named after a group of three lakes. So essentially, it’s a tablet named after a location named after a lake trio. Very meta.

The translation gets difficult regarding price (any Korean speakers out there, a little help would be very appreciated), but we expect that this tablet, if real, will only get in the hands of an elite few.