Despite strict limits on internet access and business development, a new breed of tech entrepreneurs is trying to find ways to market their research, writes Geoffrey K See

Tech entrepreneurship in North Korea might seem an odd notion. This, after all, is an industry that requires internet access and smartphone usage, neither neither of which are widely available there.

Entrepreneurs also need to be plugged into a highly-connected global network of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, programmers and users to compete at the cutting edge – a bit of an ask in an isolated country, where entrepreneurship is a relatively new phenomenon.

However, despite the setbacks they face, North Korean researchers and businesspeople attended a two-week workshop last month as part of Choson Exchange’s Tech Start PY programme in August, which took place with state permission, and focused on helping build an entrepreneurial culture and a supportive environment for startups in North Korea.

They were keen to learn about the topic, and especially how they can commercialise research. The researchers we interacted with admit that they lack entrepreneurial experience, and hope to gain exposure to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to bridge the divide between research and industry.



Connectivity

While North Korea has programmers who are technically proficient, workshop leaders emphasised that they cannot build successful tech-oriented business without connectivity.

They need to be able to see in practice how customers use products on their mobile phones and on the web. They need to see what products are on the market, and need to interact frequently with programmers, venture capitalists and other entrepreneurs to understand where the market opportunities are. Moreover, they need to understand who their competitors are.

This problem became evident during small group consultations we ran, where two or three North Koreans could approach an idle workshop leader during another lecture. A small company pitched optical character recognition (OCR) software they were developing, which scans images, recognises characters and converts them into text.

They have been developing the product for more than a year, and wanted investors to fund the completion of the product. A workshop leader said ‘hey, I have something like that right here,’ and showed them a one-year-old OCR app he had on his iPad. The product manager immediately realised that his software would not be competitive with what has been on the market for a year already.

The workshop leader suggested that they could partner with a company with an existing product, and carve out a niche by working on Korean text recognition. This, as they understood, would require a degree of research into the field - something they seem not to have been able to do.

‘North Korea’s Silicon Valley’

On an non-workshop day, we were taken to see Unjong Technology Zone, just north of Pyongyang, which the National Academy of Sciences ambitiously hopes will flourish into a North Korean Silicon Valley someday. One idea we broached during the workshop seemed to fit in with that aspiration.



Participants quickly became excited about the concept of an incubator, an environment that would help turn ideas into products. While promoting the usefulness of incubators, we also pointed out that a successful incubator, which brings together startups, technology, support services, funding and training under a suitable incentive structure, is a microcosm of the larger ecosystem they need to create for businesses and investors.



The general impression was one of tremendous opportunity once restraints are relaxed

Participants often focus too much on hard infrastructure (the incubator facilities), and not enough on soft infrastructure (the networks, mentors and business environment, or entrepreneurship ecosystem). The former is a lot more visible as a milestone – certainly in a country with minimal internet access – and easier to set up. But a workshop leader with policy experience emphasised that the latter is far more important, and far more difficult to create.

Some participants grasped the value of an incubator space that would allow them to gain exposure to entrepreneurial skills, demonstrating that they were thinking about tackling the soft infrastructure problem already.

Successful venture capitalists and policymakers who had founded companies incolved in developing entrepreneurship ecosystems in Asia attended the August programme. The general impression was one of tremendous opportunity once restraints are relaxed.

Around 40-50 Koreans attended, and represented a diverse cross-segment of the tech sector, from researchers and aspiring entrepreneurs, to established entrepreneurs, business managers, and IT association representatives.

Who knows, maybe we’ll see some of them in that DPRK-Silicon Valley, working in hoodies, playing foosball on their lunch and taking breaks in nap pods in the near future. Or, if that’s a cultural step too far, they may at least be starting small companies and getting them growing.

Geoffrey K See founded Choson Exchange, a non-profit organisation that teaches North Koreans business skills