Number of N. Korean mobile phone users tops 1 mln: report

More than 1 million North Koreans are subscribed to mobile phone services provided by Egypt's Orascom Telecom, a media report said Thursday (local time), indicating growing mobile penetration in the reclusive country.

The number of cell phone users in North Korea has reportedly surged in recent years despite Pyongyang's strict control over any flow of information within and across its borders.

Orascom made the announcement in a regulatory filing on Thursday, Bloomberg said.

The company launched mobile phone services in North Korea in

2008 through Koryolink, a joint venture it set up with the North.

Koryolink is the sole mobile phone operator in the communist country.

Also Thursday, Orascom chief Naguib Sawiris met with North Korea's nominal head of state, Kim Yong-nam, the North's official media said. Kim, the president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, the North's rubber-stamp legislature, had a "friendly talk" with Sawiris, according to the (North) Korean Central News Agency, without giving further details.

North Korea, which has a population of 24 million people, first launched a mobile phone service in Pyongyang in 2002. The service was later banned after a deadly explosion in a northern train station in 2004, possibly out of concern that it could be used in a plot against the regime. (Yonhap News)