Sili Bank
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Sili Bank (Chinese: 實利銀行, Shili Yinhang; Korean: 실리은행, Silli Ŭnhaeng) is a financial institution based in Shenyang, Liaoning, China, closely related to the government of North Korea.
The name "sili" (實利)means "true profit" in both Chinese and Korean.
In 2001 the bank began offering a limited electronic mail relay service to and from North Korea, where Internet access is limited. Along with Chesin.com, Sili Bank appears to be one of only two e-mail gateways to DPRK.
Sili Bank maintains dedicated servers in Pyongyang and Shenyang, between which e-mail transmissions are exchanged once every 10 minutes (when the service commenced, this was hourly).
As of May 10, 2003, the fee for sending an e-mail to North Korea from abroad, was 0.1 euros per kilobyte for up to 40 kilobytes, and 0.2 cents for each additional kilobyte in each e-mail transmission.[citation needed] The minimum charge per e-mail was 1 euro. Customers must first pre-register with Sili Bank with prepayment for estimated usage over a three-month period. SiliBank only allows e-mail relay between registered users of the service.
[edit] External links
- Sili Bank official site (in English, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Japanese)
- Website offers email links to N. Korea (The New York Times,November 1, 2001)
- North Korea opens door to e-mail (ITworld, November 6, 2001)