Exploring User Experience (UX) Design in North Korea

OVERVIEW

Little is known about North Korean user experience (UX). The advancement of information technology in North Korea is remarkable, and the spread of IT in North Koreans’ everyday lives exceeds our expectations. Considering that UX develops concurrently with IT, we can assume that UX design exists in the North Korean IT industry. This study explores three problems: What are the political UX factors inherent in North Korean IT products considering their highly ideology-oriented culture? How does North Korea cope with global UX design trends? What are the similarities and differences in UX between South and North Korea, which share the same historical and lingual roots yet have sociocultural gaps after more than 70 years of division? As part of my on-going research to build foundational knowledge about the North Korean industrial design and IT sectors, this study aims to grasp the current status and characteristics of North Korean UX design.

Keywords:

• UX
• design
• North Korea
• information technology
• IT

Acknowledgments

With thanks to my supervisors: Dr. Junho Choi and Dr. Bongkyu Lee at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2021.1896078.

Notes

1 North Korea is the world’s most secretive and closed country. It seldom issues any data to the world. A South Korean citizen cannot visit there and conduct research. Even if one is allowed to enter their territory, there is little opportunity to study against real North Korean residents. Such limited access is a typical research difficulty for any study on North Korea.

2 Initial findings from phase one were presented at HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) 2019 conference held at Orlando in 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sung Woo Kim

Sung Woo Kim is a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Information at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. He also teaches UX at Kookmin University. His research interests include 'Design for Unity', which examines design's contribution to Korea's peaceful reunification.