WUZHEN /China/, October 22. /TASS/. Unification of Internet segments of North and South Koreas in the course of forecasted social and economic rapprochement of the North and South of the Korean Peninsula is along way off, "father of the South Korean Internet", a professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Chun Kil Nam told TASS.
"A long road is ahead and we do not know yet how it will happen. North Korea has its own Internet, and South Korea has its own," he clarified in the course of the sixth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, east China. "Seoul and Pyongyang don’t even have a common position on a name for the national domain yet (South Korea uses .kr, while North Korea uses .kp - TASS)."
The expert underlined that the current geopolitical conditions make it impossible to forecast a quick unification of the Korean Peninsula. "We have a lot to change. The unification will happen gradually. Be it as it may, there is no war between the North and the South - this is already progress," he believes.
Chun Kil Nam pointed out that Seoul’s national blocking system restricting opportunities of South Korean citizens to acquaint themselves with the North Korean Internet so far has been blocking a digital integration of North and South Koreas.
"The idea and technologies of the system blocking undesirable segments of the Internet in China - the so-called firewall - were adopted from Singapore," the expert underlined. "Speaking of the South Korean Internet space, we are using similar methods, similar to those used by Beijing. However, they are primarily aimed at restricting access of South Koreans to North Korean websites."
The unification of the Korean Peninsula planned by Pyongyang and Seoul envisages gradual lifting of every restriction possible in cooperation between the North and the South, particularly in the Internet domain. There are various forecasts of how the Korean nation will reunite. Moon Chung-in, Special Advisor to South Korean President Moon Jae-in for Foreign Affairs and National Security, earlier told TASS that the North and South Korean authorities can create an economic union similar to the European Union in the next 10-15 years and complete the process of the ultimate unification by 2045.