By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, September 6th, 2010
North Korea, one of the poorest and most politically isolated countries in the world, is undergoing something of an economic renaissance thanks to a growing software industry fueled in part by American media company News Corporation, a published report declared Monday.
Developers from the country’s General Federation of Science and Technology were responsible for creating the mobile phone games “Men in Black: Alien Assault” and “The Big Lebowski Bowling,” according to reporters Matthew Campbell and Bomi Lim, writing for Bloomberg.
Both games are based on films produced by 20th Century Fox, the movie arm of Rupert Murdoch’s international media empire. News Corp., which ultimately published both games under its Fox Mobile label, owns the Republican-leaning Fox News Channel.
Conducting business with North Korean firms is not illegal despite recent rounds of international sanctions over the country’s nuclear weapons program. “[Unless] they are linked to the arms trade,” Bloomberg noted, the business relationship is fair game.
The reporters’ scoop came from two executives at Nosotek Joint Venture Company, which specifically markets North Korean-developed software to clients around the world. In this case, the games were picked up by the Ojom unit of mobile games developer Jamba, which was sold to News Corp. in 2006 by digital content verification and infrastructure firm VeriSign.
The New York Herald Sun 