My wild guess is: they might not have had any internet connection at all. But it really depends whether the Koryo Tours guys thought the extra cost would be worth it. I don't have any updated pricelist from Nosotek (the North Korean/Dutch joint venture outsourcing firm which wrote Pyongyang Racer), but back in 2010 they charged an extra €40 to €60 per day surcharge to clients if they wanted their team of two outsourced Pyongyang programmers to have direct internet access; otherwise the team would work "in a cleanroom environment and can not connect to the
internet" and all email contact would be with the Nosotek managers only.
http://www.nkeconwatch.com/nk-uploads/nosotek-pricelist.pdf
To put this in perspective, that charge is almost the same as the charge for one of the programmers themselves. My guess is, Nosotek most likely have to pay for a third guy from the government to watch the browsing habits of the first two, and that third guy has to belong to both the set of political reliables and the set of internet-savvy people --- two sets which are already small in North Korea and whose intersection is even smaller. Not to mention the cost of the extra computer and internet connection itself
Very interesting contract. Did you use them for a project?
4. Communication
Communication between the engineers and the customer will only take place by email or Nosotek's bug tracking server. Phone calls are not possible. Chatting is only possible with members of Online Programming teams.
Emails exchange will only take place once pay day, answers to questions will be giving on the following day, sometimes two days later.
The customer accepts that it might happen that email communication is interrupted for one or two days for technical or administrative reasons.
In case the customer sends political propaganda or agitation, Nosotek has the right to cancel the project without returning the prepaid fees.
They have an internal intranet with bulletin boards and even dating sites that a few select have access to. I think it's mostly there to make rich kids feel like they're not missing out. A very, very small number of people even have access to the "real" Internet.
Kim Jong Il once (around a decade ago) famously asked Madeleine Albright for her email address.
Certain US government mailing lists have this same problem. For example, the Federal Register table of contents listserv, which sends out daily mails consisting of links to government notices. Every few weeks, lawyers all over the country — plus us random wonks who also read the Federal Register for fun — get an autoreply from some other law firm telling us who quit or got laid off:
http://listserv.access.gpo.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1210C...
I'm only surprised it doesn't happen more often. I guess, given the intended audience, it's not so surprising that it doesn't get abused. But still, it would be incredibly easy to send out a fake email pretending to be the Federal Register. Imagine all the fun you could have issuing your own antidumping notices and arms control regulations.
I've seen it happen at individual federal agencies, but the culture there keeps people from abusing the lists. I do like how some companies keep spam lists, like Zynga-Spam was like a targeted comedy feed.
Quite a number of South Korean companies have set up shop in Kaesong Industrial Park, right over the DMZ in North Korea. There's 100+ factories employing more than 40,000 workers. There's buses going across to South Korea every day, though obviously they get cut off in times of tension. I don't think LG does anything directly at Kaesong, but there's certainly other electronics manufacturing going on there: 13 firms in total produced $59 million of electronics at Kaesong in 2010. Of some relevance to this discussion, Magic Micro has been making lamp assemblies for LCD monitors there since 2006. In short, it's not just canvas sacks and artificial flowers coming out of labour camps.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34093.pdf
No doubt, in any supply chain, the highest value-added steps are not occuring in Kaesong. As pointed out by others, labour costs can't explain the difference of hundreds of dollars on these monitors and so samstave's guess is likely wrong (though I don't think he deserves to be downvoted into oblivion). But companies don't decide to locate at Kaesong for cost reasons anyway; rather, they're there for nationalistic reasons about promoting reunification. The factories there apparently don't even break even in the absence of South Korean government subsidies, and the future of those subsidies is uncertain:
http://koreajoongangdaily.joinsmsn.com/news/article/article....
(Another slightly more complex point is that companies manufacturing products at Kaesong likely have to accept lower margins on them --- exporting them runs into sanctions issues in many countries, meaning they have to be sold in the domestic market --- but I doubt that's what's going on here to make these monitors so cheap either).
I am sorry to downvote you but this is bad advice that could cost some lurker quite a bit of penalties. The fact that aethr and so many other people bring up the drastic step of renunciation should have told you right off the bat that this is not a matter of "$50 and 2 hours" learning Turbotax.
The issue is not the tax owed (which as you correctly note tends to come out near zero) but the reporting requirements, which go well beyond those imposed on people who live in the US and keep all their assets there. Turbotax and other consumer software packages do not (and likely never will) support the kinds of complex forms you have to file if you settle outside the US and start leading a normal financial life like any other resident of your adopted homeland: Form 8621 if you'd like to buy ETFs on your local stock exchange, Form 3520 if you're obligated to participate in a local retirement plan --- and most relevantly to Hacker News, Form 5471/8858 (and maybe a 926 and 8832 as well) if you'd like to start your own company where you live. Estimated time for completion for Form 5471 for example is 44 hours (plus a recordkeeping burden of 130 hours, primarily due to the part where you have to redo all your company's accounts in US GAAP), and it has a failure-to-file fine of tens of thousands of dollars per accounting period.
All of these forms (except Form 8938 & FBAR) must be filed regardless of the tax owed or the value of the asset in question. These forms (and their associated failure-to-file penalties) were designed with extremely rich onshore people in mind --- because Congress didn't think anyone besides a multi-millionaire tax-evader would use a "Controlled Foreign Corporation", "Passive Foreign Investment Company", or "Foreign Non-Grantor Trust". But as it turns out, the way the rules are written, literally every American who lives abroad for more than a few years ends up in a similar boat as American homelanders with more than 100x their income/assets, and has to pay accordingly for tax advice --- not advice on how to reduce their taxes (since once taxes in the country of residence are taken into account, there is already no tax owed), but advice on how to properly report to the IRS.
Singapore is an expensive place to live, housing wise (though I hear food is super cheap and super plentiful with a massive "Street food"/mall-food-court culture).... though I imagine HK real estate isn't cheap either.
Housing is expensive, yes, but you can live cheaply in HK if you're willing to adjust your standards downwards: you can get a tiny flat in a low-rent area without worrying about violent crime, you can eat at cheap diners or buy groceries at cheap wet markets without worrying about food-borne diseases, etc, owning a car is logistically & socially unnecessary, etc. Not everyone needs these guarantees but it helps if you're the kind of person who worries a lot =)
What is the visa situation like in Hong Kong? I've read elsewhere that getting a visa for China is very difficult (this might be an area where HH is different from CN). Are you able to get reasonably long visas so that you can stay there indefinitely, or will you have to relocate again in 6 months or a year?
HK Immigration Department is totally separate from mainland China. Different laws, different visa types, different procedures. It's not that hard to get a real visa here. ImmD is strict about their requirements but they are not mysterious, arbitrary, or painfully slow like USCIS. There is a self-sponsored employment visa (called "investment visa", but it doesn't require big capital investment, just a business plan). It does have to demonstrate some sort of benefit to locals, but that can be in terms of using local suppliers for goods and services, rather than hiring lots of local workers. There's also the QMAS visa, a sort of points-based skilled migration visa that gives you more flexibility.
Trying to work for your own company while on a tourist visa is a gamble. For 90 days you'll be okay. Longer term, some people have josscrowcroft's experience and go on visa runs for years without trouble. If you're low profile and don't compete with local companies the Immigration Dept. may ignore you. But others end up like this Aussie who came to HK to give a risk management seminar and got two months in prison followed by deportation for working illegally: http://news.sina.com.hk/news/2/1/1/2352180/1.html
If you decide to stay really longer term, the system is generally quite fair (at least to skilled workers and students; if you're a maid or construction worker it's a whole other kettle of fish): permanent residence takes seven years, but your "clock" doesn't reset if you change employers (e.g. if you get acquired and become an employee sponsored by your acquirer), and there's no ridiculous quota on how many PRs are approved each year. And once you have PR it's actually permanent: you can vote, you cannot be deported and there's no bullshit about "losing status" for filing a tax return as a non-resident or going back to your home country for a couple of years.
I've made a rough translation of the license. As mentioned it's in Japanese. It's also kind of confusing. I'll send a pull request when I'm back at my desktop. (EDIT: Though of course, redistribution seems to break the condition at line #6).
1 Orto SDK is Free Software.
2 Copyright Kobayashi Yuu
3
4 Use and publication of applications produced by using Orto SDK
5 are free for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.
6 For other uses of Orto SDK, or for redistribution of the Orto SDK,
7 please contact support@orto.jp beforehand.
8
9 Due to lack of contract with Sun Microsystems,
10 Orto is Java-style but it is not Java. Orto is an independent language.
11 Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems
12
13 The author is not responsible for any damages which may occur through use of Orto SDK
14 Furthermore, reverse engineering of Ordo SDK is prohibited.
Later on I'll have a read and translate any interesting parts of it. Right now it's 4 AM here, I'm coming off a long and not-very-fun debugging session, and I'm going to sleep.
I blogged about that report and translated some portions of it at the time, see there for my thoughts on these things. my analysis in short: not many people taking concrete action, not many people leaving permanently. http://notlearningcantonese.posterous.com/rich-emigrants-as-...
I particularly liked this quote: "[I]t's reasonable to expect to find a large number of retained legal representatives under a legal system in which people feel that their property rights are constantly threatened by rent-seeking litigiousness or in which rampant rent-seeking opportunity gives them an incentive to behave litigiously themselves. The rarity of retained champions in medieval England therefore suggests that rent seeking under trial by battle wasn't rampant."
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=camz
> I didn't realise Forbes let you blog under their brand now
In fact that's been their exact business model for a while. Good March 2012 article on that:
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/173743/what-t...