Although strictly controlled, existence of internet in North Korea was revealed in 2014 after the country suffered an attack by external hackers.

However, only now do we know how their websites look like.

Official data about the entirety of the North Korean internet was leaked, apparently by accident, by authorities on Sept. 20, 2016.

This was after Doug Madory, a researcher at Internet monitor Dyn, had noticed that North Korea's system administrators had made a mistake, which then allowed outsiders to query websites that used the ".kp" name.

The information made it to Reddit and as you can expect, the internet jumped on the information -- because everyone loves to know more about the mystery that is North Korea.

Turns out, North Korea has a staggering grand total of 28 websites -- websites that use the ".kp" domain name -- which have been compiled into a list by neitzens.

A quick glance at the list shows that many of the sites belong to official bodies; interesting ones include a film site and one that features culinary recipes.

While these sites have always been accessible from outside of North Korea, the fact that they are never publicised means that the leaked list revealed a lot more about the hermetic nation than we ever knew.

And the fact that they don't really live that differently from us. Ah ha, surprise.

Like so.

According to the film site, the Pyongyang International Film Festival is happening right now. Apparently, the three kinds of movies that North Koreans can catch at the festival are art films, documentaries and animated movies.

Sounds quite fun, doesn't it?

And while they don't have food blogs that Singaporeans are so used too, they do have a restaurant guide and recipe sorta site for "housewives' convenience". It's like Meatmen meets Ladyironchef.

Not too bad at all.

Contrasting view of the world

If there's one thing that stood out when we visited some of these North Korean sites (those that still can be accessed now anyway), it's the way information is presented.

In particular, we looked at official news site Rodong Sinmum and noticed a huge difference in what constitutes as news in North Korea:

Seems like everyone wants to know what  Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un is up to, like, every day.

Apart from following the Supreme Leader's daily itinerary, the site has, of course, what all news sites have --  an international news section:

But it seems like only international news regarding the DPRK is reported. Ooh, what a surprise.

Because there are two Koreas, the news site understandably has an "Inter-Korea" section which features rudimentary articles like this:

And scathing, rancorous articles like these:

"Traitor", "confrontation maniac", "thrice-cursed", "evil woman of Chongwadae".

Wow.

While we don't expect news in North Korea to be similar to what we read every day, seeing in person how their journalists adhere to a whole other set of journalistic standards is honestly appalling yet amusing.

Who visits these North Korean websites?

These 28 sites all have a domain name system that differs from the internal intranet that North Koreans have access to.

So if these sites are not set up for North Koreans, for whose information procuring purpose are they for?

There are news sites in English -- are they geared towards to international audience?

Highly unlikely, given that these websites were only discovered only after they were leaked.

So who are these websites created for? Who do they expect to read it?

Add this on to the long list of erratic and puzzling things North Korea does that we don't get.

We leave you with this piece of breaking news that we only just found out today.

The earth without the DPRK can never exist.

Top image from Rodong Sinmun and USAToday

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