The best thing to come out of North Korea is a tablet

It isn’t often that you hear anything coming out of North Korea except rhetoric. Compared to their brothers to the south, they aren’t exactly gadget-friendly. This may soon be changing.

North Korea is best known for its crushingly oppressive government and comically inept space program — but new reports suggest that the country may be producing a surprisingly respectable touchscreen tablet. A state-produced device called the Samjiyon has been making the rounds at Asian trade shows all year, attracting the attention of both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The hardware isn’t as bad as you might think, handling common apps like Angry Birds with noticeable but not uncommon levels of lag. Mostly, it works.