Geoffrey See of Choson wants to build new WeChat, Taobao

Ed Jones | AFP | Getty Images

Women look at a mobile phone as they ride a tram in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Even though U.S. and United Nations sanctions have weakened trade relations between China and North Korea since September 2017, it is still considered to be North Korea’s leading trade partner.

As a result, North Koreans are increasingly exposed to Chinese tech companies and are gaining a keen interest in e-commerce. “They will often come back and bring up examples of things they’ve seen like WeChat, or Taobao and say oh, we are very interested to see if we can do something like this in North Korea,” See said.

Even though North Koreans are limited to using a tiny, domestic intranet controlled by the government, See said that domestically assembled mobile phones are becoming more common.

“We’ve seen some food delivery apps pop up on the domestic phone. We don’t know how actively people use them, but people are definitely experimenting with new ideas,” he said.

Even though North Koreans have limited access to international news, See said he eventually wants North Korea to interact with the rest of the world in a “normal way.”

See isn’t alone in perceiving a possible upside in the country.

“There is no doubt that there is a great deal of creative power in North Korean society and in its economy, which is often easy to miss in all the bluster,” said Silberstein of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “The past few years have also seen an impressive growth both in quality and scope of domestic manufacturing and innovation.”

“But the question,” Silberstein said, “is how far this can all go with the way things stand right now.”