Nosotek () is the first Western-invested IT

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

company in

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

. Nosotek is known for developing computer games for various platforms, such as the

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

Java ME Java Platform, Micro Edition or Java ME is a computing platform for development and deployment of porting, portable code for embedded system, embedded and mobile devices (micro-controllers, sensors, gateways, mobile phones, personal digita ...

and the

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

. They claimed to have 50+ programmers on the team in 2009. Nosotek's main target market is

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

and payments by customers are processed through companies in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

History

Nosotek was founded in July 2007 by the North Korean General Federation of Science and Technology (GFST) and the foreign entrepreneurs

Felix Abt Felix Abt (born 15 January 1955, Switzerland) is a Swiss business affairs specialist on North Korea and Vietnam. Abt was one of the first foreign entrepreneurs to seek to do business in contemporary North Korea, where he lived between 2002 and ...

and Volker Eloesser. Ju Jong Chol also played a major role in founding of the company. The company was joint venture between GFST and Felix Abt and Eastmars Ltd (Owned by Volker Eloesser). Nosotek took industry by surprise with its popular western oriented games. This included a popular

role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, or abbreviated as RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out ...

for

Nintendo Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, ...

and an app that reached that reached Apple's Top 10 list in Germany for at least 1 week in 2008. They also developed award-winning medical software. Products' names are kept are confidential as clients don't want to be associated with North Korea. Nosotek's co-founder Felix Abt claimed that company became profitable in less than a year. Several of Nosotek's games are distributed by German company Exozet Games, which includes a game called "Bobby's Blocks." Between 2007 and 2010, Nosotek's North Korean programmers made mobile-phone games based on the Hollywood films

The Big Lebowski ''The Big Lebowski'' () is a 1998 crime comedy film written, directed, produced and co-edited by Joel and Ethan Coen. It follows the life of Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), a Los Angeles slacker and avid bowler. He is assaulted ...

and

Men in Black In popular culture and UFO conspiracy theories, men in black (MIB) are government agents dressed in dark suits, who question, interrogate, harass, and threaten unidentified flying object (UFO) witnesses to keep them silent about what they have ...

which were then distributed in the western countries by Nosotek Joint Venture Company. They developed "Big Lebowski Bowling", a 2007 bowling game set in a bowling alley where much of the movie was set, and "Men in Black: Alien Assault" a game in which players battle invading aliens. Those games were published through Ojom GmbH, a subsidiary of Jamba, which was later wholly bought by

News Corp The second and current incarnation of News Corporation, doing business as News Corp, is an American mass media and publishing company headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The company was formed on ...

. for $188 million in October 2008 and later renamed Fox Mobile. Elocom Mobile Entertainment GmbH was founded by Volker Eloesser in 2003, which was later brought by Ojom. In 2012, Nosotek cooperated with students from the

Kim Chaek University of Technology Kim Chaek University of Technology () is a university in North Korea, on the banks of the Taedong River in Pyongyang. It is named after General Kim Chaek. The university's programs in nuclear reactors, nuclear electronics, nuclear fuel and nucle ...

to develop ''

Pyongyang Racer ''Koryo Tours Pyongyang Racer'' or ''Pyongyang Racer'' is a 2012 racing game developed by Nosotek and published by Koryo Tours. The player drives a Hwiparam II car around Pyongyang and visits several of its sights while collecting fuel and avo ...

'', a

racing video game Racing games are a video game genre in which the player participates in a racing competition. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to fantastical settings. They are distributed along a spectrum between more realistic raci ...

built for and released by the

Koryo Tours Koryo Tours is an independent British tour operator based in Beijing, specializing in group and private tourism to North Korea. Their tours run throughout the year covering budget to exclusive trips. There are packages for staying in the capital P ...

travel agency to promote

tourism in North Korea Tourism in North Korea is tightly controlled by the North Korean government. All tourism is organized by several state-owned tourism bureaus, including Korea International Travel Company (KITC), Korean International Sports Travel Company (KISTC), ...

. This game represents the first North Korean game which was widely available online. As it turns out had ''

'' was based upon an earlier game developed by Nosotek which was published on Facebook by "one of the big players in the social media market." Nick Bonner conversed with Volker Eloesser, which led to the creation of the game. He liked the idea of working on a "fun, nonviolent and nonpolitical" project with North Korean youth. The company's software development business, which it offered since its founding in 2007, appears to be shut down and, since 2013, the company's website has been inaccessible after being hacked. The site was hit in 2013 and its front page was replaced with a message in French, English and Korean attacking North Korea. A tag on the page claimed the hack was the work of "Syndicat de Boucher-Leblanc." A linked website entitled "Global Clandestine Operations Network" has information in English, French, Russian and Arabic, but offers little information about the group. The hacked content has gone and the main site is yet to return.

References

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20100711001826/http://www.interview-blog.de/politiker/wenn-das-regime-sich-nicht-wirtschaftlich-offnet-wird-das-land-kaum-vorankommen-im-gesprach-mit-ulrich-kelber-mdb-zu-seiner-nordkoreareise
North Korean Economy Watch - German Entrepreneur in DPRK
* {{YouTube, _AZnlyKXGPM, Presentation

* https://web.archive.org/web/20120123074939/http://www.prlog.org/10733028-german-delegation-visits-north-korean-games-company.html * https://web.archive.org/web/20121004100500/http://www.interview-blog.de/unternehmerinnen-und-geschaftsideen/nosotek-is-the-first-european-invested-software-development-research-co-mpany-in-the-dprk-with-the-head-office-in-pyongyang-interview-with-mr-ju-jong-chol-vice-president-of-nosotek/ * https://www.nkeconwatch.com/category/organizaitons/nosotek/ * https://www.nkeconwatch.com/2009/09/03/felix-abts-advice-on-starting-jv-company-in-the-dprk/#more-5004 * https://www.gpic.nl/IT-in-NKorea.pdf Information technology companies of North Korea Video game development companies