Entrepreneurs in North Korea aren't as rare as you'd think

North Korea may seem like barren ground for entrepreneurs. But hearty founders have defied a lack of technology and support to start their own ventures, even before this week’s historic summit in Singapore raised the prospect of more economic opportunity.

There’s an e-commerce site called Manmulsang — which means the everything store, in a nod to Amazon.com Inc. — and Okryu, a mobile-shopping service. There’s also a navigation app, Gildongmu 1.0, which means road friend. Founders need to overcome some unusual obstacles. The only way for customers to get new smartphone apps, for example, is to go to a brick-and-mortar store and download them. It’s the App Store for autocrats.

Still, North Korea has allowed thousands of citizens to study entrepreneurship, despite any apparent conflict with socialist practices. Choson Exchange, a nonprofit group, has trained more than 2,000 North Koreans in their own country and Singapore in the past decade. Long before Kim Jong Un admired Singapore’s skyline from the Marina Bay Sands building ahead of his summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, many compatriots sipped beer on the same spot while visiting for classes on entrepreneurship and venture capital.

Ian Collins, an Australian instructor at Choson Exchange, ran a four-day workshop for 80 people north of Pyongyang, in November. His students learned how to develop business models and deliver three-minute elevator pitches on their business ideas -- though it was unclear whether they would ever be in an elevator with a venture capitalist. The lack of resources sparks ingenuity. Several students came up with mobility products that rely on solar energy. Another group proposed taekwondo boards that can be broken and reassembled more than 100 times.

“They were probably the most eager, hungriest people I’ve ever spoken to,” Collins said. Top students go to the country’s premier universities such as Kim Il Sung University and the Kim Chaek University of Technology, where they learn the basics of computer science even though internet access is limited. They regularly win prizes in international coding competitions and their talents have helped North Korea emerge as a global cybersecurity threat.

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