The number of mobile phone users in North Korea has increased to 450,000, up 50 percent from the figure released late last year by an Egyptian company operating in the reclusive nation, South Korean officials said Tuesday.

   In a speech to a group of businessmen in Seoul, Vice Unification Minister Um Jong-sik said the increase indicates more and more ordinary North Koreans, particularly youths, are enjoying mobile communications within the boundaries of isolation set by the regime.

   "This tells us that the range of people taking advantage of mobile communications is diversifying after being limited to only power elites," Um said.

   A ministry official, who had provided the data, explained later by phone that Um was citing a Feb. 2 report by Chosun Sinbo, a Tokyo-published newspaper with correspondents in the communist country. The official said he was not in a position to be identified in the media.

   The paper, seen as aligned with Pyongyang, reported the figure as part of a story covering the late January meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and Naguib Sawiris, chairman of Cairo-based Orascom Telecom Holding that has provided service in a joint venture with the North since 2008, the official said.

   The Chosun Sinbo report could not immediately be found and verified.

   Orascom said in an earnings report in November that the number of subscribers in North Korea had more than quadrupled in just a year, reaching 301,199 as of September.

   The expansion in subscriptions illustrates the fast growth of a tech-savvy generation in the North, raising curiosity over its possible role should a social movement loom there.

   North Korea observers, however, say in general there is little possibility in North Korea of a popular uprising sparked by a rapid spread of information technology.

   North Korea, which has a population of 24 million, first launched mobile phone service in Pyongyang in 2002, but banned it after a deadly explosion in a northern train station in 2004, possibly out of concern that it could be used in a plot against the regime.

   In 2008, the country reversed its policy and introduced a 3G mobile phone network in a joint venture with Orascom. (Yonhap News)